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| Note the empty parking lot behind protest. The protest exposes a severe rift in Jordan, which sports a populous that is about half Palestinian and half Jordanian "East Bankers" |
Low Turnout for Anti-Israel Rally in Jordan -Isabel Kershner
Efforts to organize a million-person march on the Israeli Embassy in Amman, Jordan's capital, concluded with about 200 pro-Palestinian protesters cordoned off by nearly as many Jordanian police and security officers in a vacant lot about a mile away from the diplomatic mission. The turnout was clearly a disappointment to many of the participants, who demanded the closing of the embassy, the expulsion of the ambassador and the annulment of the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.
This is a time of rising tension between Jordanians of Palestinian origin and the original Jordanians known as East Bankers. Across the road from Thursday's rally, patriotic music blared from the house of an East Banker family who had placed loudspeakers on the front porch, often drowning out the chants of the protesters. "They are not real Jordanians," said the head of the family, Jaafar Abu Hashish. "They are not against Israel, they are against Jordan," he said.
(New York Times)
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2 comments:
What is there to say. Jordan by and large is not looking to get into the middle of this.
One day Jordan will be right in the middle. When the world figures out that the Palestinians cannot govern themselves, Jordan will be re-employed to govern over the West Bank. Jordan would love to have the influence back [after losing the West Bank in their 1967 blunder] and has proven itself able to govern a [half] Palestinian state with stability.
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