Jordanians stage protest in solidarity with Palestinians
Thousands of Jordanians gathered in the capital Amman and on the border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank yesterday in solidarity with Palestinians in Jerusalem and Gaza, AFP correspondents said.
Around half of Jordan’s 10mn-strong population is of Palestinian origin, including some 2.2mn Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations.
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Demonstrators in Amman shouted, “The people want the liberation of Palestine” and “Jordan salutes Arab Palestine” as they marched, before being stopped by a heavy security deployment, an AFP correspondent said.
Some carried Palestinian and Jordanian flags, as well as signs that read, “Expel the (Israeli) ambassador and shut the embassy”.
“The border must be opened so that we can defend Al Aqsa and Jerusalem to the death,” said 23-year-old Mohamed Khalil, referring to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site, located in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
“Israel practices terror,” said the student, a Palestinian scarf draped over his shoulders. ”Don’t they (Palestinians) have the right to defend themselves?”
West of Amman, around 3,000 people gathered near the West Bank border in Karameh, the site of a 1968 battle of Palestinian fighters and Jordanian army soldiers against Israeli troops that is symbolic across the Arab world.
Some chanted “Open the borders” and “We are ready to die as martyrs for Jerusalem”, without trying to cross the frontier. Israelis and Palestinians faced a widening conflict yesterday, as deadly violence escalated across the West Bank amid a massive aerial bombardment in Gaza and unprecedented unrest among Arabs and Jews.
Dozens have been killed, most of them Palestinians. The most intense hostilities in seven years between Israel and Gaza’s armed groups were triggered by unrest at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, against a backdrop of rising tensions and the threat of eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in an east Jerusalem neighbourhood. Jordan has for days seen protests in solidarity with Palestinians.