Thousands of people took part on Friday (May 14th) in the biggest rallies organized in Jordan in recent days in solidarity with the Palestinians in Jerusalem and Gaza, where a military escalation between Israel and the Islamists of Hamas has left more than 100 dead, noted the 'AFP.
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In Amman, the protest began after Friday prayers outside the Husseini Grand Mosque in the center of the capital. To cries of "
Jordan salutes Arab Palestine
", or "
The people want the liberation of Palestine
", the demonstrators walked a kilometer before being stopped by an imposing roadblock of the police, noted a journalist from AFP. The protesters displayed the Palestinian and Jordanian flags and carried banners crossed out in particular of "
Let us liberate Palestine from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean)
". "
We must open the border so that we can defend to the death (the mosque) of Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem,
" said Mohammed Khalil, a 23-year-old student.
50 km further west of the capital, in Karameh, near the border with the West Bank occupied by Israel since 1967, some 3,000 people gathered in front of the monument to the Unknown Soldier. It is a symbolic place because of the first big clash which had opposed for 15 hours, in March 1968, a few months after the Arab defeat of June 1967, the fighters of Fatah and the Israeli army. The demonstrators, who did not advance beyond the police blockade, chanted “
Open the borders
” and “
We are ready to die as martyrs for Jerusalem
”.
These demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinians have been taking place daily for a week in Jordan.
They come against the backdrop of an unprecedented military escalation since 2014 between Israel and Islamists Hamas, in and around the Gaza Strip, where the armed movement is in power, as well as violence in mixed Arab and Jewish Israeli towns.
Since Monday, Israeli raids and bombardments on the Palestinian enclave have killed more than 120 people.
In Israel, the death toll from Hamas rockets has risen to nine.
The escalation began on May 3 after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in East Jerusalem, an occupied part of the Holy City, amid threats to evict Palestinian families for the benefit of Jewish settlers.