An short trip back home

Israeli ambassador to Jordan returns to Amman after having left the city on Thursday due to security concerns. The embassy was threatened by anti-Israel protesters that were going to demonstrate against the presence of Israel in the country. The Israelis feared that these protesters would end up assaulting the Embassy as it had happened after the last anti-Israel demonstration in Cairo, and so they only left a « skeleton » representation at the embassy. What threatened to be a dangerous and massive protest did not have the feared consequences, as the amount of protesters was far less from expected. As a result of that, Israeli’s most important diplomats were back in Jordan by Friday and the rest of the diplomatic corps were again in their places by Sunday, after having spent the weekend at home as they usually do.

From my point of view this is a really interesting news not only because it concerns more than just one country, but also because it shows another branch of the conflict between Palestine and Israel. A conflict that has been in the public eye for decades. With more than half of its residents being Palestinians, Jordan would « have reasons » to oppose Israel but, in contrast with other countries’ stance in the Middle East, they decided to sign a peace treaty with them in 1994. Even if at certain moments violence and confrontation threaten to appear due to this paradoxical political stand of « being friends with the enemy », I think that the fact that nothing bad happened after all is a very positive thing. For me, the right to protest it’s always there, but I think that the use of violence would have taken away all the legitimacy of the demonstration.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/09/16/israel.jordan.embassy/index.html?iref=allsearch