A soccer match played Friday between the Jordanian league's Al-Faisaly and Al-Wihdat ended in a 1:0 victory for Al-Wihdat. The real news, though, wasn't the score, but the skirmish that broke out, in which 250 fans and policemen were injured, after the wire fence that separates the spectators from the field collapsed. This wasn't just a clash between fans accompanied by stone-throwing, broken bones and arrests. It was a political battle pitting the Al-Wihdat fans, mostly of Palestinian descent, against the Al-Faisaly fans, mostly of Jordanian origin.According to the Haaretz article, the names of the teams reflect the cause of the tension. The Al-Faisaly team gets their name from Hashemite King Faisal. That team is controlled by the Adwan tribe. On the other hand, the Al-Wihdat team is named after the largest Palestinian refugee camp located southeast of Amman. It is controlled by businessman Tareq Khoury, a member of the Jordanian parliament in 2007 and has been known to use the club for political purposes.
This is not the first time a soccer match between these two teams has turned into civil war. In July 2009, police stopped a game in Zarqa because the Al-Faisaly fans began cursing not only the Palestinian players but even Queen Rania and the heirs to the throne who happen to be Palestinian. That event, barely reported in the Jordanian media because of strict censorship rules, was of particular interest to the U.S. embassy in Amman, which expressed its concerns in a cable to the State Department. The dispatch was published by WikiLeaks last week.
Clashes between the 2 teams is not uncommon, and the U.S. embassy cable made available by Wikileaks sees these incidents as a barometer of the tensions between the East Bank (Jordan) and West Bank. In 2009 the Al-Faisaly fans went so far as to demand King Abdullah divorce his Palestinian wife, who they would substitute with a Jordanian one.
But according to the Wikileaks document, it wasn't the outbreak itself that got the attention of the US embassy:
Apparently, it wasn't the incidents themselves that sparked the interest of the U.S. embassy but rather the weak response of Jordanian authorities. Prince Ali, Abdullah's half brother, who heads the Jordanian soccer association, published an anemic statement describing the behavior of the Al-Faisaly team as unbearable and fining it a relatively small sum equivalent to $7,000, according to the dispatch. It added that the official media were avoiding coverage of the story and that even those commentators who support the regime were apparently told to refrain from writing about it.To make things worse for King Abdullah, when Dutch foreign minister Geert Wilders was in Israel, he attended a seminar, "Can Jordan be the Palestinian national state?". Jordan protested and the Dutch government had to disavow statements Wilders made about making Jordan into a Palestinian state.
Embassy officials interpreted this reaction as a clear sign that tensions between the two groups had reached such a level that even their closest sources are refusing to discuss the matter, saying it touched "on the very heart of national identity." One source was quoted as saying, albeit with reluctance, that the game demonstrated the "ugly sides of Jordanian ultra-nationalism." Embassy officials said in the cable that tensions may be linked to planned reforms that are expected to transfer some of the positions of power traditionally held by the Jordanian elites to Palestinians, who for years have been complaining about discrimination.
The cable concludes by noting that "the king's silence about the game is deafening" and that senior Jordanian officials are amazed that the monarch did not respond to the personal attacks on his family.
Maybe Jordan should consider baseball instead?
Technorati Tag: Jordan and Al-Wihdat and Al-Faisaly.
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