AMMAN: Jordanian demonstrators marching towards the Israeli embassy in Amman on Sunday to protest Israel’s latest storming of hospitals in Gaza and increasing civilian deaths clashed with police.
The local authorities had deployed riot police to tackle the protestors gathered in the Kaloti mosque while they were planning to march towards the embassy of Israel.
Several protesters were beaten and several apprehended while they tried to break a heavy police cordon around the embassy.
They chanted anti-Israel slogans such as “No Zionist embassy on Jordanian land,”. They were asking Jordan to end its unpopular peace agreement with Israel.
The Israeli embassy, where protesters daily gather, has been a flashpoint of anti-Israel demonstrations since the Israel started a war in Gaza on October 7.
Jordan has seen some of the biggest peaceful rallies across the region as anti-Israel sentiment runs high over the brutality in Gaza.
The authorities allow demonstration but say they cannot accept any attempt to storm the embassy, creating a civic unrest or try to reach a border zone with the Israeli occupied West Bank.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, as their parents were expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that created Israel in 1948.
Since October 7, Israel’s air and ground offensive into Gaza has resulted in the killing of at least 32,226 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and 74,518 injuries, with 84 casualties reported in the past 24 hours alone, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
