A massive pro-Palestinian rally in Jordan was thwarted with tear gas by police on Friday when the crowd decided to march on the heavily fortified Israeli border.
Members of the mob howled accusations of “treason” at the police for driving them back.
An attendee who was dismayed at the police for driving the demonstrators back from the border wall commented:
We are here to support the Palestinian people in Gaza. I have seen scores of police, who have attacked us. They cannot suppress our rights. We are here to defend our human rights. Jordan is beside Palestine. We are here because of our feelings for a people without weapons.
“There are Palestinians living under occupation, it is your duty to help them, shameful!” another shouted at the police.
The demonstrators were responding to a call from Hamas terrorists for a global “Day of Rage” or “Day of Jihad” to thwart Israel’s response to the horrific massacre perpetrated by Hamas on Saturday.
The Jordanian Interior Ministry announced Thursday that “calls for gatherings and demonstrations in the Jordan Valley and border areas are not allowed.”
“The Jordan Valley and the surrounding areas along the border with Palestine are prohibited for gatherings, and the Jordanian armed forces are responsible for their protection and maintaining security therein,” the Interior Ministry said.
King Abdullah II of Jordan met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman on Friday. The king opposed displacing Palestinians from Gaza and said he was worried about the “spillover of the crisis into neighboring countries.”
The State Department said Blinken “underscored that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination and discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of civilians in Gaza while Israel conducts legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism.”
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Blinken further emphasized the administration’s “commitment to Jordan’s security and economic prosperity” and thanked Abdullah for “Jordan’s special role in Jerusalem and as a force for stability in the region.”
According to Haaretz, on Friday, Blinken expressed “condolences to the families of Palestinian victims of the conflict” and stressed the Biden administration’s support for “the Palestinian people’s legitimate right to dignity, freedom, justice, and self-determination” during his meeting with Abdullah.
Reuters on Wednesday reported Abdullah “has since the start of the latest conflict been engaged in a flurry of diplomatic efforts with Western and regional leaders urging swift action to de-escalate the situation.”
Tamar, Yonatan, and their children — Shachar (6), Arbel (6), and Omer (4) — were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz. (@EladStr Twitter/X)
Jordan has a large population of Palestinian refugees who fled during the 1967 war with Israel, as well as their descendants. It does not treat them terribly well, denying them the benefits of citizenship, charging them extra for state services, and limiting their employment and residential opportunities. Jordan’s Palestinians rely heavily on charity from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
At one time, Jordan granted citizenship to Palestinians from the West Bank but began systematically and arbitrarily revoking those benefits in the late 1980s. In 2018, it revoked the citizenship of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and several of his top officials, removing a benefit granted to them in 2011.
This was done, in no small part, because the Jordanian monarchy realized Palestinians had become the majority of the modest national population. The Jordanians would very much like to see a Palestinian state carved out of Israel and would be ecstatic if most of the Palestinians in Jordan decided to move there.
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