Hundreds of Jordanians marched to the Israeli embassy in Amman on Sunday in protest against Israel’s latest storming of hospitals in Gaza and mounting civilian deaths.
Riot police deployed to disperse the protest gathering fired teargas and attacked the demonstrators who were gathered in the Kaloti mosque in the capital city planning to march to 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, Reuters reported.
“No Zionist embassy on Jordanian land,” the protesters chanted.
It has become customary at protests to call on Jordan to scrap its unpopular peace treaty with Israel that often prompt accusations of a sell out.
Other protesters chanted slogans backing Hamas.
“We want to go to the borders and kill and kidnap Zionist soldiers. Revenge … revenge … Oh Hamas, bomb Tel Aviv,” they shouted.
The Israeli embassy, where protesters gather daily, has long been an epicentre of anti-Israel protests at times of turmoil in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The kingdom has witnessed some of the biggest rallies across the region in past weeks, as anti-Israel sentiments run high over the carnage in Gaza.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the exodus that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. They have close family ties with their kin on the other side of the Jordan River.
Though authorities allow protests they do not tolerate any attempt to storm the embassy, instigate civic unrest or to reach a border zone with the Israeli occupied West Bank.
The Jordanian police have arrested hundreds of activists and protesters since October 7.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s genocidal onslaught in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave.
