Jordan: Protests Reveal Rift over Palestinian Issue

The protests planned via Facebook for Thursday evening outside the Israeli embassy, which prompted the early departure of the Israeli diplomatic mission in Amman, drew a turnout of 200 mostly young protesters. The discussion of the Palestinian bid for statehood in the U.N. has elucidated tensions between East Bank Jordanians and Jordanians originally of West Bank, or Palestinian, descent. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, which sparked a protest outside the U.S. embassy Wednesday, apparently reignited this rift in Jordanian society.

“The Black Iris” reported that the East-bankers/West-bankers divide is “in full bloom these days as a result of the Arab Spring.” One East-banker said in response to Thursday’s protest outside the Israeli embassy that these demonstrators were against Jordan rather than against Israel. At the same time, there is a division between West-bankers in Jordan and Palestinians currently residing in Palestine. While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the U.N. to grant a Palestinian state comprised of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, the protesters in Amman called for “the liberation of all of what the protesters called Palestine, meaning the pre-1948 British Mandate territory stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and a rejection of the Israeli state.