AMMAN: Chanting slogans urging Islamist Hamas
militants to resume suicide bombings against
Israel, thousands of Jordanians marched in the
capital yesterday to protest against Israel’s
blockade of Gaza.
About 8,000 activists from Jordan’s mainstream
Muslim Brotherhood took to the streets to support
their ideological allies, the Palestinian Hamas group,
and hail militants’ success in breaching the Gaza
border in defiance of an Israeli blockade.
“The people of Jordan are with Hamas,” chanted the crowds
who called on the Islamist group to resume a campaign
of suicide bombings and intensify rocket attacks against Israel.
“Oh Hamas hit them with Al Qassam rockets ...
bring the suicide bombers to Tel Aviv,” they chanted,
waving the green flags of Jordan’s opposition Muslim
Brotherhood.
Israel said it had tightened its Gaza blockade last
week to counter cross-border rocket fire,
but after an international outcry, fuel and aid
supplies were partially restored.
Passions prompted by the blockade have run high
among Jordanians, many of whom are of Palestinian origin.
Defying tough government curbs on street
demonstrations, thousands of mostly pro-Hamas
loyalists have in the last few days taken to the streets
inside many of the country’s squalid camps and poor
districts of the capital under the watchful eyes of the
authorities to show solidarity with their brethren.
Jordanian officials have been alarmed by Israel’s military
escalation in recent days and privately worry it would
only weaken efforts to advance Arab-Israeli peace talks.
They fear it broadens the popularity of the Islamist
movement among a majority of poor Jordanians,
many of them living in refugee camps and
disenchanted with the US-led Middle East
peace process. - Reuters
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