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Demonstrators clash with police near border with West Bank

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October 25, 2000 

SOUTH SHUNA, Jordan (AP) - Under heavy rain, thousands of Jordanians marched toward an Israeli-controlled border crossing Tuesday, then clashed with police in fighting that injured more than 100 people and broke up the attempt to cross the frontier.

More than 10,000 people from Jordan's 13 opposition parties in addition to legislators, political activists and trade unionists participated in the "March of Return." They first staged a sit-in in front of the Martyrs Monument of Karameh, sight of a 1968 battle between Palestinian guerrillas and Israeli forces.

"The protest march is aimed at highlighting and insisting on the right of return of Palestinian refugees and Arab and Muslim rights in Jerusalem," said Saleh Armouti, one of the organizers and president of the Jordan Bar Association.

The issues of refugees and Jerusalem are two of the most difficult subjects in the now frozen Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Palestinians want the eastern part of the holy city to be the capital of their future state and also demand that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Jordan and elsewhere be allowed to return to what is now Israel.

Israel says it will not recognize the right of return, but will allow some refugees to settle in Israel on humanitarian grounds. It is willing to relinquish some of the outlying Arab neighborhoods but not the entire eastern sector of Jerusalem.

The demonstrators, carrying banners reading "Yes to cutting ties with the Zionist enemy" and "Yes to the right of return," called on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to strike against Israeli like he did during the 1991 Gulf War.

Some demonstrators wore T-shirts depicting maps of a Palestine that includes what is now Israel.

The demonstrators headed toward the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan River, which separates the kingdom from the West Bank. As helicopters hovered overhead, police using water cannon and tear gas clashed with them some 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) east of the bridge. Police also fired into the air and beat rock-throwing protesters with clubs.

Hospital officials in the area said they treated 15 policemen and 120 demonstrators.

A similar march in 1989 also left scores injured.

Tuesday, the 35-kilometers (22-mile) road from Amman to the border was filled with Jordanian armored personnel carriers and security forces kept many people from reaching the demonstration.

During the past three weeks, Arab demonstrators across the region have condemned Israel for clashes between its security forces and Palestinians that have left more than 120 dead, most of them Palestinians.

Elsewhere in the Arab world Tuesday, Syria's state-controlled newspapers said it was ominous that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has declared "time out" in the peace process and opened talks aimed at bringing rightists opposed to the negotiations into a coalition government.

"If all these events mean a thing, they mean that General Barak has been preparing the ground for another show of force, killing and destruction," the English-language Syria Times said.

Al-Baath, newspaper of Syria's ruling Baath party, said that Barak "is explicitly announcing war against the Arab nation.