Jordan Is Enveloped by Silence

Silence descended Friday on the rundown family home of Ahmed Moussa Daqamseh.

Police turned away the curious. Neighbors clammed up, apparently aware of police orders not to discuss Daqamseh, the Jordanian soldier who shot seven Israeli schoolgirls to death the day before.

Regional police gave the reason: “It’s very sensitive,” one said. “It’s a matter between states.”

Ubdur, a quiet community with pastoral views of the Golan Heights and Israel, has become the focal point of a drama with far-reaching implications, the deepening crisis in the once-warm relationship between Israel and Jordan.

Reports here indicated that Daqamseh, a driver in the Jordanian army, has a history of mental instability. But the shooting at the Bakoura border post also came against a backdrop of deep Jordanian frustration and growing anger with Israel over issues ranging from the Jewish state’s perceived intransigence in dealings with Jordan and the Palestinians to the fact that Jordan’s own 1994 peace treaty with Israel has brought little economic benefit.

“Even if he is psychologically unstable, this doesn’t erase the fact that [the shooting] happened in a political context,” Jordanian political analyst and commentator Rami Khouri said. “After all, he shot Israelis, not Syrians or Egyptians.”

Khouri and other Jordanians interviewed Friday expressed sadness over the deaths of the seven girls, calling Daqamseh’s sudden attack on them a senseless tragedy. And several said they would support the idea of a condolence visit by King Hussein to the families of the bereaved to reflect the sorrow of his nation.

“Perhaps there is not a person on Earth who did not have feelings for these people,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Haithem, standing in a group outside a metalworking shop in the village of Mansura. “It was shameful.”

In the shooting’s immediate, emotional aftermath, several Israeli officials indirectly linked the attack to the Jordanian monarch’s recent harsh criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his policies toward the Palestinians.

Early this week, the king sent a stinging letter to Netanyahu warning him that his policies were pushing the region toward an “abyss of bloodshed and despair.”

In strongly personal terms, Hussein castigated Netanyahu for the “deliberate humiliation of your so-called Palestinian partners” in recent Israeli decisions to build a Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem and to carry out only a limited troop withdrawal from occupied parts of the West Bank.

But the king, clearly shaken by Thursday’s violence, and the official Jordanian media--which follow his lead--markedly changed their tone. No political statements were allowed to intrude on the official expressions of grief.

Unofficially, however, many Jordanians, while condemning the shooting, said they could understand how the growing tensions between Israel and Jordan, and the anger and disappointment on this side of the border, might lead an unstable person to commit such an act.

“The atmosphere has become very tense,” said Ibrahim Izzeddine, a former Jordanian Cabinet minister and onetime ambassador to Washington. “People here realize that Israel is not even abiding by the Oslo agreements [between Israel and the Palestinians], which themselves were not well received in the Arab world. There’s a real frustration.”

To understand the reasons behind the sharp rise in tensions, he and others said, it is necessary to look at a series of recent actions by the Israeli government and to remember that in a nation in which Palestinians are estimated at 60% to 70% of the population, the Palestinian connection is especially important.

And, they said, it is important to recall the enthusiasm with which Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, and the way he stood alone among Arab leaders in calling for calm after a government led by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party replaced the king’s Labor Party peace partners in last year’s Israeli elections.

In recent weeks, Jordanians and Palestinians alike have been angered by the Israeli decision to build the new Jewish community on the southeastern outskirts of Jerusalem.

Israelis across the political spectrum regard the city as the undivided capital of the Jewish state; Palestinians see the decision as part of an Israeli plan to keep East Jerusalem from becoming the capital of their own wished-for independent state.

“Jerusalem, of course, was the reason behind this act,” said Ghazi, a 37-year-old teacher who asked that his last name not be used. “I believe that every individual Jordanian in this period has thought about extremism” because of Israeli policies in Jerusalem.

For the Jordanian public, a source of equal frustration has been the nation’s failure to realize any dividends from its peace treaty with Israel. Many had believed that peace would translate to a tangible boost in the nation’s economy, but they have seen little in the way of gains.

“We haven’t benefited in any way,” said Abu Mohammed, 47, who owns a minimarket in the town of Umm Qays, about four miles from Ubdur.

Several of those interviewed said they hoped the result of the Bakoura shooting would be to unite Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis in a renewed push for peace and to wake all sides up to the dangers of the current impasse. But they feared that the cycle of anger and violence could prove hard to halt.

“I am very much afraid that the whole thing, the whole peace process, may collapse,” Izzeddine said. “The Israelis say they will go forward with building this neighborhood. But no Arab, no Muslim, is going to concede on Jerusalem.”

Muhammad El-Hasan of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.