AMMAN, March 25 — Riot police fired teargas to push back hundreds of Jordanian demonstrators marching on the Israeli embassy in Amman yesterday in protest at Israel’s latest storming of hospitals in Gaza and mounting civilian deaths.
The authorities had earlier deployed riot police to disperse demonstrators gathered in the Kaloti mosque in the capital who were planning to march on the heavily fortified Israeli embassy nearby.
Several protesters were beaten and several arrested as they tried to break a heavy police cordon around the embassy, witnesses said.
Police were not immediately available for comment.
They chanted “No Zionist embassy on Jordanian land,” in one of the slogans that have become customary at protests that call on Jordan to scrap its unpopular peace treaty with Israel that often prompt accusations of a sell out.
The Israeli embassy, where protesters gather daily, has long been a flashpoint of anti-Israel protests at times of turmoil in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The kingdom has witnessed some of the biggest peaceful rallies across the region as anti-Israel passions run high over the carnage in Gaza.
The authorities allow protests but say they cannot tolerate any attempt to storm the embassy, instigate civic unrest or try to reach a border zone with the Israeli occupied West Bank or Israel.
They have arrested hundreds of activists and protesters they say have broken the law since the war that was triggered when Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel on a rampage on October 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave
Other protesters chanted slogans backing Hamas.
“We want to go the borders and kill and kidnap Zionist soldiers. Revenge ... revenge ... Oh Hamas, bomb Tel Aviv,” they shouted.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. They have close family ties with their kin on the other side of the Jordan River. — Reuters
