Israeli offensive shakes Jordanian society

GAZA REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan -- Gloom hung over the house where Amin's adult daughter had died of an unknown disease. Rain was leaking through the tarpaulin that served as a roof in half of the two-room structure of mud brick and cinder blocks where 15 people live.

So bitterness was not far from the surface when Amin and a handful of fellow Palestinian refugees gathered to discuss their flight from Israel in 1948. "Jewish gangsters came and occupied our village, and we were forced out," he said.

His anger may be unsurprising in one of Jordan's impoverished refugee camps, a town of 35,000 near the ancient city of Jerash, 40 km north of the capital, Amman. But the sentiment hints at the stresses that a majority Palestinian population brings to Jordan, one of only two Arab states that have signed peace treaties with Israel (Egypt is the other). The fragile peace is fraying in Jordan as Israel's military campaign grinds on in the West Bank.

About 60 percent of Jordan's 5.1 million population classifies itself as Palestinian. Ethnically and linguistically, they are identical with native Jordanians. Many are active in business and the professions, and half live not in camps, but in Amman and other cities (even Jordan's queen, Rania Al-Abdallah, comes from a Palestinian family). Yet memories are long, and many are bitter at Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel.