In this case, some anti-Israel activists flew to Amman, Jordan, and they plan to cross into the West Bank today from there. Whether they are allowed to cross the Allenby Bridge or not, they will continue their anti-Israel agenda, as they try to divert public attention from the upheavals in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere.
One of the groups making up this protest, EuroPalestine, reports that the activists visited the Jerash "refugee" camp on Saturday. And they noticed that Jordan is not such a wonderful place to be for some Palestinian Arabs. In fact, you might even call how Jordan treats the residents of Jerash as - apartheid.
Indeed. In 1967 there was no threat to the residents of Gaza from Israel, but tens of thousands of them streamed out of Gaza towards Jordan anyway (through Israel!) because they simply did not want to live under Jewish rule. There were no expulsions, no massacres, no threats from Israel. This was a completely voluntary flight, as the Gazans assumed that they would be able to become citizens of Jordan just like the Palestinian Arabs who fled there in 1948 and that life there would be better than under Israeli or Egyptian rule.A hundred men, women and children, from the mission WELCOME TO PALESTINE went Saturday to the Palestinian refugee camp of JERASH, Jordan, near Amman.
They were warmly welcomed by officials and residents of this camp which includes more than 35,000 Palestinians from all of the Gaza Strip.
These people have a special place in the tragedy of the Palestinian people and in fact arrived in Jordan after the 1967 war, not during the Nakba of 1948, and have a status of "displaced" and not "refugees".
Grouped in an area of 75 hectares, the 3000 Jerash families have no nationality and no longer receive any benefits since 2010 from UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.
But they were wrong.
Jordan never gave citizenship to Gazans. And the Gazans remain, stateless and discriminated against, in Jordan.
How much discrimination do they suffer? EuroPalestine goes on:
The only camp school is obliged to accommodate 6400 pupils, part-time only, in overcrowded classrooms as we imagine. The camp has indeed no right to construct new buildings and expand on the land leased by UNRWA for a period of 99 years.Yes, an Arab from Yemen or Egypt can become a citizen of Jordan, but one from Gaza cannot. Sounds like apartheid to me.
Even after graduation, students who have received scholarships to go to the Dalhousie University in Jordan can not engage in employment in the public and remain stateless for life.
But for some strangre reason, the "Welcome to Palestine" people cannot quite use that word even when they report on the explicit discrimination against many Palestinian Arabs in Jordan.
Oh, one other thing: Israel cannot stop Jerash residents from moving back to Gaza if they want to. They can easily travel to Egypt and then enter Gaza via Rafah. No, the only people who prevent that from happening are the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the current leaders of Gaza!
See also JSSNews, which discovered this article.