Amman: Two Notes on the Margin of a Street Battle
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April 5, 2002
Amman, Jordan


When a regime such as that of Jordan sets itself up stubbornly in the midst
of the path of its own people, clashes with demonstrators on the street
become inevitable, if not necessary.  Protestors invariably echo one
message: close down the Zionist Embassy; cut off all diplomatic and economic
relations with Zionists; support the Intifada with money, weapons, and men;
and last but not least, get off the back of the Pro-Intifada protests on the
street.  Let the people express their support for the Intifada!  In return,
the regime has chosen to ignore the demands of the street protests and to
crush them with excessive force as happened for example in Jordan
University, the refugee camps, and near Al Kalouti Mosque today,
approximately one kilometer away from the Zionist Embassy.

Nowadays, at least the Arab media are reporting regularly on the practically
around the clock pro-Intifada protests in Jordan.  Of course there are
protests such as the one in which tens of thousands took part in on the
evening of Tuesday, April 2, 2002, under heavy rains and cold winds.  That
one was authorized by the regime.  The leadership of official opposition
parties and the unions agreed to walk the demonstrators to the (dissolved)
parliament, away from the Prime Minister’s Office or the American or the
Zionist embassies.  And the regime infiltrated the demo with dozens carrying
photos of King Abdallah, then called it a legal demonstration and so left it
to march in peace.  Let them vent off some steam, and may the heavy rains
and the cold winds be punishment enough for them.   But let the anti-riot
troops be displayed threateningly on the sides just in case someone thought
about heading in the right direction.

Still, there must have been something frightening to the regime about the
shadows of human waves in the rainy dusk chanting over and over the one
message: close down the Zionist embassy; close down the Zionist Embassy;
close down the Zionist embassy;... After all, you can drag a horse to the
political mainstream, but you cannot force him to drink.  And with thousands
of little actions in unison, the masses turned the ‘legal’ demonstration
into a REAL protest.

Yet when the ‘realists’ and the emasculated leaders of the ‘legal’
opposition parties and the unions are not there to help de-claw the mass
movement, the regime gets very nervous early on.  Since the day before
yesterday, thousands of mobile messages flew back and forth telling people
to gather after Friday prayers at Al Kalouti Mosque to march on the Zionist
embassy.  The State Television last night and the morning papers today
carried a warning from Interior Minister Kuftan Al Majali saying that
‘illegal’ protests will be dealt with severely.  But what is going on in
Palestine seems to have been a bit too much to heed such ominous calls, just
in case Mr. Al Majali hadn’t noticed.  The people are not a button that you
can push down at will; which is a lesson for revolutionaries and activists
as much as it a lesson for repressive regimes.  Today the people were READY
to bleed on the street for Palestine.  May the diversionary blood donation
drives being advocated by the regime instead, as an alternative to protests,
be exposed as the red herring that they are: CLOSE DOWN THE ZIONIST EMBASSY
IN AMMAN.  DON’T WASTE OUR TIME WITH BULLSHIT.

The main roads leading to Al Kalouti Mosque were shut off to vehicles since
before Friday prayers started.  Thousands trickled on foot through the
alleys and the side roads in the direction of the Kalouti Mosque.  Thousands
more were blocked.  Each time security noticed a few hundred gathered in the
vicinity, they would ram them with anti-riot vehicles and hack them down
with clubs.  And that was BEFORE any protest started.  The regime wasn’t
even going to let the protest take off.  But it was much too late for that.
The party was already on, whether the regime liked it or not, for rebellion
begins in the soul, not in the gatherings, which only follow.

As soon as Friday prayers were over, chants broke out: Allah Akbar, Allah
Akbar (God is Greater).  The preacher in his sermon had exhorted the people
to leave in peace, but it seems even he hadn’t noticed either that hearts
were already too full for that.  Thousands coiled before Al Kalouti Mosque
then marched up towards the Zionist embassy.  It seems thousands more, only
a part of the protestors who were able to make it to the vicinity, had
managed to break through a thin security line from the left to join those
already headed up the hill to the dreaded embassy.  The march began to swell
slowly but steadily with dozens appearing from everywhere.  There were no
‘realists’ or defeatists around.  This was not their type of party.  Now
there was a seething sea bursting at the seams with calls to close down the
Zionist embassy.  The street belonged to the people, and despite what
happened later, it was a moment of TRUE freedom.  And all those who ever
experienced moments like those will tell you that they are highly addictive.

Then the beatings began.  I saw several guys bleeding from busted heads.
They were hauled inside Al Kalouti Mosque, which was broken into by
anti-riot troops later on.  The wounded were taken somewhere, allegedly to a
hospital.

In the meantime, armored vehicles and troops were blocking the road to the
embassy.  Waves of tear gas swept over as security troops started shooting
canisters at the protestors.  Up until this point, the protestors were
peaceful enough, even after they were dispersed by force.  It should be made
clear here that only when the armored vehicle shooting colored water
proceeded in the direction of the faraway and retreating protestors that the
rock-throwing began.

Violence lives in a separate world of its own rules, just like love,
mathematics, faith, politics, or a dream.  There is a point when a protestor
getting beaten and gassed, seeing his friends bleeding, and seeing the
troops wielding clubs chasing young girls up a hill, that he decides that it
was time to grab a rock.  The troops retreated.  Some of the young men took
over the adjacent hills and engaged in a cat and mouse game with the troops.
  The troops were throwing rocks back.  Then they launched a massive all-out
offensive, chasing the protestors as far away as Al Madina Al Munawara
Street in one case, where the troops were going after protestors and
shooting tear gas canisters into the passing traffic.  It was more like a
reprisal than an attempt to quell a protest.

In the meantime, small throngs of protestors engaged the troops in
stone-throwing all around the alleys and the back streets leading to Al
Kalouti Mosque for about two hours after the protest began.  Many young men
were beaten and arrested there.  Tear gas would seep through the windows of
houses in the area, as the chases went on.  From their windows and their
balconies residents would start yelling condemnations at the troops each
time they ganged up on a captured protestor: ya yahoud (JEWS)!

As I type these lines, my face is still burning from the poisonous fumes
hurled into the demonstration.  Mind you, that was not only tear gas used in
the clashes around the Mosque.  In many cases, gases that induced temporary
blackouts or blindness, not to mention vomiting and fainting, were used on
the protestors as well.  One of the used up canisters said on its side:
chemical irritant, expires in April 1995, for outdoors use only.  Made in
the U.S.A.  Long live democracy (between the lines).

Two Notes on the Margin:

I realize that the confrontation around Al Kalouti Mosque is not the most
ferocious that took place in Amman today.  In and around refugee camps, for
example, today and for several days throughout last week, the confrontations
have been much more violent.  Yet even that is not to be compared to what is
going on inside Palestine itself, except for the fact that the perpetrators
here claim to be Arab.  But, to the extent the Arab grass-roots movement in
support of the Intifada is important for the Intifada or other concerns, we
have to think deeply about the following two issues:

1)	whereas in Palestine itself, the initiatives of small local groups can
combine together to perpetuate the Intifada and paralyze the opportunism of
defeatists, ‘realists’, and the inept negotiators, in Jordan, as well as in
Egypt and other Arab streets, what is needed cannot be accomplished on the
initiatives of small local groups alone.  Military action in guerilla
warfare launched from cities, towns, and refugee camps, necessarily relies
on the cooperation of small groups.  That may or may not be good enough for
Palestine.  But when what is needed is an Arab mass movement in the hundreds
of thousands, and when those leading the ‘legal’ opposition parties and the
unions neither dare nor care to escalate the movement on the street to the
level of seriously putting pressure on the Arab regimes to support the
Intifada, what becomes needed is POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.  As it stands now,
the mass movement is spontaneous.  That makes it purer and devoid of
defeatist influences as it reflects the true will of the people: unreserved
support for the human bombs tactic; total opposition to any form of
recognition of “Israel”; virulent appeals to just let those who want to
fight Zionists get through Arab borders.  But on the organizational level,
that very same spontaneity also makes the mass movement disorganized, and
thus vulnerable to the more organized forces of oppression.  Even on the
tactical level, to give but one example, the lines of the troops surrounding
the protestors at Al Kalouti could have been overrun today with about twenty
thousand protestors around, had there been some form of field leadership
that is able to move large blocs of people at specific times to specific
places in a coordinated manner. There was no such leadership around, maybe
because each person or group who had been invested with such trust had
managed to betray it in the past.  Therefore, when the vanguard of the
protestors in the forefront were crushed, the protest was decimated and only
small separate groups remained engaged in side-battles with the troops in
the wings, later on to be crushed themselves when each of them was tackled
by the troops alone.  In short, we need to seriously consider establishing
some form of a general coordinating mechanism between small groups and local
initiatives if we want the Arab grass roots movement to turn into a tangible
political force.


2)	It is evident that Arab regimes do not care much what their people think,
and worry more about doing what pleases the master in Washington.  Surely
they engage in some damage control theatrics sometimes that can fool only a
few.  So much is well-known, even redundant. But when those regimes exercise
such violence against unarmed protestors, and when some Arab regimes insist,
under the threat of guns, to keep Zionist embassies open while Zionists are
engaged in a murder spree against the Palestinian people, we really have to
start thinking along different lines than those of protesting peacefully no
matter what.  Why should every real protest turn into a show of excessive
force against the protestors?  Why should every political red line laid down
by the regime be considered sacrosanct taboo?  Why should we fear losing our
lives if we march on the Zionist embassy when our brothers and sisters
across the river Jordan have taught us that life is nothing without freedom?
  Are our lives more precious than theirs?  Will our friends and relatives
cry for us more?  Or will we bleed any less if we fight back than if we
don’t?

I think we need to consider changing our whole attitude about mass protests
in general.  Protestors do not attack the troops.  It is the troops who
attack the protestors.  The regimes put themselves in the way of the people,
not the other around.  Yet there is nothing more powerful than the hundreds
of thousands marching in the street.  The regimes, in spite of all of their
malevolent repression, are paper tigers when the people roar.  So, the
regimes must understand that they are not free to beat, arrest, attack, gas,
chase, and generally oppress the people.  The people in their protests are
seldom the ones to initiate violence.  It is the other way around.  The
protestors have the right to defend themselves, and if the law is not
protecting them, then they have to defend themselves.  Blood, teary eyes,
pain, broken limbs, and tripping demonstrators are a frequent sight in the
streets, universities, and refugee camps nowadays.  But even if all that is
for a worthy cause, we have to start thinking that enough is enough.  The
progress of the movement has come to depend now on our ability to make the
protests achieve their political aims, not just suffer horrible pain for a
noble cause, even if that by itself is a political achievement.

One final note: there were two persons from the American Embassy taking
notes openly right across the street from Al Kalouti Mosque.  Not a very
smart thing to do, but still, if that provocation doesn’t prove that the
demonstrators were peaceful, I don’t know what will.

And a great many thanks to the Italian guy who started arguing with security
troops on the behalf of the demonstrators : )

Later
Ibrahim Alloush

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