Hundreds rally near Israeli embassy in Amman

Thousands had vowed to attend a “million-strong” march near the Israeli embassy in Amman in campaigns on Facebook and other virtual forums, prompting a reported evacuation of the diplomatic mission a day earlier. Come Thursday, only a few hundred showed up at the Kaloti Mosque, almost a kilometre away from the embassy in the western Amman district of Rabia, the traditional location for anti-Israeli rallies that have for years demanded the expulsion of the Israeli envoy from Amman and cancelling the 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Some of the participants in the march, which ended peacefully, attributed the weak turnout to the nature and the goal of the activity, saying that people’s main concern at this stage is reform, and so they are less interested in expelling Israel’s ambassador now. Khaled Abdul Fattah, a political activist in his 40s, speculated that the youths who initiated the idea were just trying to copy what Egyptian peers did when they recently attacked the Israel embassy in Egypt, the other Arab country that has entered a peace deal with Israel. Earlier in the month, a group of activists called on the public on their page on the social network, Facebook, to mass at the Kaloti Mosque and head towards the Israeli embassy to break inside the compound and replace the Israeli flag with a Jordanian flag. “Maybe it is not the right time to raise demands related to the Palestinian issue. People want change in the domestic arena so far. That is a more attractive call,” Abdul Fattah said. For Hassan Deiraniyeh, a resident in the area, the blame goes to the Islamist opposition, whose leaders encourage youths to take to the streets for causes like Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel, yet fail to join them. “What I can see is a group of enthusiastic young people but where are the leaders of the Islamic movement? None of them is here,” he said. Raising Jordanian flags, the protesters chanted slogans rejecting the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel and called on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador and close down the mission of the former enemy. Hours before the protest started, police reinforcements were seen pouring into the vicinity of the embassy and setting metal barricades and human barriers in order to prevent the protesters from approaching the embassy’s premises in the upscale Rabia neighbourhood. The event witnessed minor friction between police and a group of demonstrators who tried to cross the barricades but were stopped by the anti-riot security forces and forced to go back to a nearby empty plot of land next to the mosque.