Anger at Israel ‘universal among all Jordanians’
Jordan’s former Foreign Minister Jawad Anani has said the anger Jordanians feel at the Israeli war in Gaza “is not limited to Jordanians of Palestinian origin. It is universal among all Jordanians.”
“They feel that the Israelis have crossed every human border. They have violated every human rights of the Palestinians and now when we focus on a given event, somehow we forget the bigger picture,” he told Al Jazeera from Amman, Jordan.
“The bigger picture is very bleak on the Israeli side and they commit so many violations to the point that most Jordanians, if not all of them, are extremely angry about what’s happened,” he added.
Israel’s attacks on Palestinians ‘bound to breed’ retaliatory attacks
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, says the attack on the Jordanian border crossing was “unique, and in some ways unprecedented”.
“We’ve seen other attacks. There have been attacks in the West Bank and I think that the lesson here is that the kind of violence that Israel has unleashed on Palestinians, particularly in Gaza but also in the West Bank, is bound to breed these kinds of retaliatory attacks,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera.
He added that Israeli security will be “ratcheted up further” due to the attack.
“In some ways, it’s hard to imagine what else they could do. They basically destroyed significant parts of Jenin, and obviously, Gaza has been almost completely gutted,” Elmasry said.
“But I think Israel’s going to do what it usually does in situations like this and that will probably involve greater intensification of attacks in Gaza and in the West Bank under the pretext of security,” he explained.
King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge shooter identified as Jordanian cargo driver: Jordanian gov’t
Jordan’s Ministry of Interior said that initial investigations into the shooting incident at King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge earlier today confirmed that the shooter was a Jordanian citizen named Maher Diab Hussein Al-Jazi, according to Jordan’s news agency Petra.
Al-Jazi, a resident of the Husseiniya area in Jordan’s Ma’an Governorate, crossed the bridge as a driver of a cargo vehicle carrying commercial goods from Jordan to the West Bank, the agency said.
The ministry confirmed that the initial results of the investigation indicate that the incident, which took place at the border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, was an individual act.
The ministry said that coordination is under way between the relevant authorities to receive Al-Jazi’s body, which will be buried in Jordan.
Israel has closed all border crossings with Jordan after the shooting resulted in the deaths of three Israeli border guards.
The incident marks the first attack of its kind along the border with Jordan since Israel’s war on Gaza began last October.
