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Since Israel’s war on Gaza began, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in neighbouring Jordan, particularly outside the Israeli embassy in the capital, Amman.
Photos of popular anger coupled with literal flames in the streets have carried the message of a population enraged by what is happening to their close neighbours.
While the number of protesters has ebbed and flowed throughout the war, the recent Israeli military campaign on al-Shifa Hospital and the pending invasion of Rafah has brought many Jordanians back to the streets en masse.
Protesters’ demands may vary, though one Jordanian researcher monitoring the protests told Al Jazeera that there are some primary asks, including suspending normalisation with Israel, reconsidering ties with the United States, and cancelling other energy, gas, or trade deals with Israel. The researcher did not want to be identified out of fear of repercussions from the state.
Jordan and Israel normalised relations by signing the Wadi Araba Treaty in 1994. Meanwhile, the US and Jordan have an agreement that sees the Hashemite Kingdom net $1.45bn a year in economic and military aid until the 2029 fiscal year.
‘A Jordanian affair’
Jordanian security forces have responded to the protests with force at times and have arrested protest leaders from across society, including politicians, journalists and union figures, drawing criticism from human rights groups.
The Public Security Directorate said in a statement on Sunday that its forces have “dealt with the participants in the vigils held over the past months with the utmost discipline” and that despite this restraint, some protesters insisted on “deliberate abuse [and] a number of people were arrested”.
Authorities have tried to blame disquiet at protests as the work of shadowy “infiltrators” or “ghosts”, as the researcher put it. But the protests have resonated with wide sections of society, including both native Jordanians and those with Palestinian origins.
“The protests are ongoing because what’s going on in Gaza is very much a Jordanian affair,” said Imad Harb, director of research at the Arab Center Washington DC. “We’re talking about a country with at least two million Palestinians who live and have citizenship in Jordan but they still have ties to the old country and still care a lot about the old country.”
“Protests are not commonplace, not allowed and not easy to organise,” the unnamed researcher said. “But because the issue is Palestine, people will go in big numbers.”
Pro-Palestinian protests have been common across the Arab World since October. But the protests in Amman have resonated in a way few others have, garnering attention for their size and defiance towards attempts by security forces to restrict them.
A placard at a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza reads ‘family photo’, near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, on March 27, 2024 [Alaa Al-Sukhni/Reuters]
So far, the protests have been overwhelmingly focused on Gaza and Palestine. Frustrations with the monarchy have not manifested calls for regime change, analysts said. But the understanding that ensured older generations of Jordanians avoided criticism of King Abdullah seems to have thawed for this new generation, the activist said.
“We do say things [about him] now,” they said, pointing to chants of ‘Abdullah, son of [King] Hussein, we don’t want a two-state solution’. “[Our parents were] raised to not speak about the king, but I think now it’s more commonplace to hear criticism about the king.”
‘Grabbing the stick in the middle’
The protests have added pressure on King Abdullah as he attempts to manage rising domestic anger towards his foreign policy.
“There has been a crackdown, the Jordanian mukhabarat [secret police] are always very active and Jordan is very much a mukhabarat state, unfortunately,” Harb said.
“But they don’t want to go too far in the crackdowns on protesters because they are protesting Gaza … they’re looking to grab the stick in the middle and see what works.”
In October and November, security forces “detained a large number of people”, the Jordanian researcher said. “Sometimes [they were detained] for a day or a weekend, but now some people have been detained for months for a tweet, a retweet, or even sharing a private story on Instagram to twist their arm and to say: ‘Quiet down and don’t go down on the street.’”
A handout picture from Jordan Public Security’s Facebook page on February 27, 2024, shows Jordan’s King Abdullah II, left, on a military aircraft during an operation to drop humanitarian aid over the Gaza Strip [Jordan Public Security/AFP]
The arrests in the early days seemed to slow the protests. But in late March, about 2,000 protesters, driven by the continuing carnage in Gaza, took to the streets and marched towards the Israeli embassy, only to be physically beaten back by the batons of Jordanian anti-riot police.
“They used a lot of force during the protests in October and November and they would use gas and beat people up,” the researcher said. “This led people to go in smaller numbers until March when a lot of people went back in large numbers and the crackdown intensified even more.”
At the opening of the last regular session of the Jordanian Senate on Thursday, Speaker Faisal al-Fayez said his country “will ignore critics, will remain closest to Palestine and the Jordanians will not accept that demonstrations and protests turn into platforms for discord, and an arena for implementing the plans of others, or criminalising, defaming, and betraying the state”.
Speaking to the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper on Tuesday, an unnamed Jordanian source accused “the leaders of the Islamic Movement in Amman of coordinating with Hamas leaders abroad to drag the Jordanian public into the war in Gaza” and called for an official investigation of what they termed “calls urging the Jordanian public to escalate against its government”.
Jordanian authorities have been concerned as well at a speech by Hamas’s Khaled Meshaal in late March, in which he called on the Arab people to take to the streets in their millions to protest against the Israeli occupation.
Jordan’s relationship with Israel
In the short term, analysts said they did not think the protesters’ calls to cut ties with Israel and the US were likely to push the needle.
“I do not think the Jordanian government or monarchy is ready to abrogate the Wadi Araba treaty,” Harb said. “You don’t sign a peace treaty with Israel only to go back on it. The pill has been taken.”
And on the deal with the US, Harb said: “Jordan’s economic situation doesn’t allow it to separate from the US like that,” highlighting the Jordanian economy’s reliance on US funding.
There have also been protester concerns about expanding deals with Israel. Jordan is a water-poor country and there have been discussions in the past about Israel providing Jordan with water in exchange for energy.
In November of last year, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi cited the war on Gaza and said Jordan would not sign such a deal.
Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi said Jordan would not sign a water-for-energy deal with Israel [File: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]
“Can you imagine a Jordanian minister sitting next to an Israeli minister to sign a water and electricity agreement, all while Israel continues to kill children in Gaza?” he said at the time.
While the economy is relatively stable in Jordan, finding work is a major issue. The unemployment rate increased to 22.3 percent in early 2024, including more than 30 percent for women and 46 percent for youth, according to the World Bank.
For its part, the Jordanian government points to its role in coordinating and delivering aid drops to Gazans. In February, King Abdullah himself, adorned in military fatigues, took part in an aid delivery.
Despite the Jordanian security services’ harsh crackdown on protesters, the government may point to its presence in talks with the US over the issue of Gaza and Palestine more broadly.
“I would be looking for policy changes in Jordan’s stance toward the Jordanian relationship with Israel,” Elizabeth Parker-Magyar, a PhD candidate in comparative politics and political methodology at MIT with a focus on Jordan.
“And I think the Jordanian government will be looking for a concession it can give, or an attempt to renegotiate these positions to that extent that it can in order to placate protesters.”
Palestinian and Jordanian flags at a protest in support of Palestinians in Amman, on March 29, 2024 [Alaa Al-Sukhni/Reuters]
