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Jordan May Force Hamas Leader Back to Qatar
AMMAN, June 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Jordanian authorities threatened Saturday to force Ibrahim Ghoshe, a Jordanian citizen and spokesman for the activist Palestinian Hamas group, back on to the Qatari airplane that brought him to Jordan.
Ghoshe, of Palestinian origin, has been locked in a standoff with Jordan since his arrival at Amman's airport Thursday from Qatar, when he attempted to return home after living in exile since 1999.
According to Jordanian officials, the pilot of the Qatar Airways plane on which Ghoshe arrived had received orders to fly back to Doha without him.
But the plane is still parked at the Amman airport, from which it has been refused permission to take off.
Jordan has the right to put Ghoshe back on the airplane, "even if by force," Jihad Rsheid, head of the civil aviation authority, was quoted by the official Petra news agency as saying.
Rsheid accused Qatar Airways of having planned in advance Ghoshe's return to Jordan on Thursday night, after his exile to Doha along with three other Hamas leaders in November 1999.
"Sadly the Qatari airlines are trying to wash their hands of this business, which they planned and prepared," he said following Jordan's demand Friday for Qatar to suspend all flights to Amman.
The Qatari satellite news channel, Al-Jazeera, said Saturday the crew of the Qatar airways plane had received permission to return to Qatar, while Ghoshe stayed in a special airport waiting room.
Despite their two-day old dispute over the Ghoshe affair, Qatari Foreign Minister Ahmed bin Abdallah al-Mahmud told the Al-Jazeera satellite TV network that "Qatar was keen to maintain its solid relations with the Hashemite kingdom".
He nevertheless said that "the blocking of the plane is illegal", stressing "the necessity of the return to Doha of the plane and its crew".
On the diplomatic front, Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa disclosed he was in contact with Qatar, Jordan and Libya, which has offered to send a plane to take Ghoshe back to Doha.
Mussa said he had spoken by phone with the Jordanian and Qatari foreign ministers, as well as their Libyan counterpart, in an effort to defuse the crisis.
"The League is looking to find a resolution accepted by the two brother countries," Mussa said.
Jordan's press fired a torrent of criticism at Qatar Saturday for allowing Ghoshe to return to Amman following Jordan's 1999 banning of Hamas, which is opposed to the Middle East talks with the Israeli occupation government.
An editorial in the Al-Rai newspaper said Qatar was looking to distract attention from the region's main issue "stopping the barbarous Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people."
The paper added that Qatar wanted to take attention away from the fact an Israeli trade bureau remains open in Doha despite a Qatari commitment in November to close it down.
The Al-Dustour newspaper blasted the Qatari foreign ministry for denying that the Qatar Airways pilot had been ordered not to return to Doha without Ghoshe on board.
"The Qatari foreign ministry would have to give another more credible version," the paper said.
Meanwhile, Jordanian police Saturday prevented demonstrators from marching on Queen Alia Airport to protest against the authorities' refusal to allow the Hamas leader into the country.
Around 150 union leaders and Islamic activists led by the professional federation of unions tried to march on the airport where Ibrahim Ghoshe has been stranded since Thursday and refused entry into the kingdom.
But police set up several barricades on the road leading from Amman to the airport, 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of the capital, preventing the marchers from advancing, union leader Ali Abu Sukkar said.
Nevertheless 25 protesters succeeded in slipping past police and reached the airport's main departures hall where they raised banners denouncing the government's handling of the Ghoshe incident, Abu Sukkar said.
Police immediately intervened and ripped the banners before dispersing the protesters peacefully from the airport grounds, he said.
The pilot and the seven-member crew were holed up in a Amman five-star hotel on Saturday while Ghoshe was stranded at the airport's transit hall and reporters kept at bay from both locations.
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