Before last week’s elections, Jordan’s most popular political party, the Islamic Action Front, regularly organized protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and recent incursions into the occupied West Bank.
During these, party supporters called out slogans like “we are all Hamas” and “Yahya Sinwar [who heads Hamas] is our leader.” Supporters of the Islamic Action Front, or IAF, also often demanded that Jordan scupper its long-running peace treaty with neighboring Israel, signed in 1994.
Perhaps, given the anger in Jordan about the civilian impact of Israel’s military campaign against the Hamas militant group in Gaza and the fact that around half of Jordan’s population has Palestinian roots, it should not have come as a surprise that the IAF did particularly well in Jordan’s parliamentary elections last week.
