HRW report on Gazans passing through Kingdom ‘unfair’

AMMAN – Authorities on Monday dismissed as “inaccurate, unfair and biased” a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report claiming that Jordan has tightened transit access on Palestinians from the Gaza Strip seeking to travel to third countries. 

In a report issued Monday, HRW claimed that a recent "apparent tightening" of criteria for transit has blocked access to professional and educational opportunities abroad, including for Gaza’s young people struggling with the effects of an Israeli-imposed closure.

“Jordan has gone to great lengths to accept and meet the needs of large numbers of refugees from across the region,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. “Since last August, however, Palestinians from Gaza have found it increasingly difficult to get permission to transit through Jordan to travel abroad, without any explanation for the change.”

Replying to the charges, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications and Government's Spokesperson Mohammad Momani said there has been no change in Jordan's policy towards Palestinians transiting through the Kingdom to seek jobs, educational opportunities or others. 

"The procedures, the checking of travel documents, are in place; and job and education offers are still the same," he told The Jordan Times over the phone to comment on the report, which he described as unfair.  

“We reject such a biased report that does not represent reality,” Momani said.

Last year, according to the official, a total of 11,116 Gazans transited through Jordan, which, he said, “clearly shows Jordan’s commitment to making the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation easier”. 

“What Jordan did for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause has not been done by any other country on earth,” he added. 

Other officials, when asked to comment on the report, told The Jordan Times that HRW and other organisations should keep in mind that Gazans are supposed to travel through Egypt according to post 1967 arrangements. 

When it comes to travel hardships facing Palestinians Israel is to blame, the officials said. 

HRW said in its statement, e-mailed to The Jordan Times, that for at least in the last decade, the Gaza Strip has been mostly closed, with Israel denying Gaza authorities the right to operate an airport or seaport and limiting travel via the Erez Crossing between Gaza and Israel to “exceptional humanitarian cases”. 

Egypt, which controls the Gaza Strip’s other land border, opens the Rafah Crossing just a few times per year, allowing for only 9 per cent of Palestinians’ travel needs, as measured in the first half of 2013, when Rafah was open. As a result, Palestinians in Gaza are virtually barred from travelling abroad, the report said.

HRW said that it has documented how these restrictions violate Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law, including the right of Palestinians in Gaza to freedom of movement, and that Egypt’s measures have unjustifiably increased the restrictions on their freedom of movement.

Until recently, Jordan has played a helpful role in facilitating this travel, the watchdog said. Subject to a security screening, Jordan’s Interior Ministry routinely issued “no-objection” letters that permitted Palestinians from Gaza to transit from the West Bank to foreign countries via Jordan, the organisation explained, adding that, however, since August 2015, individuals, lawyers, and human rights organisations have found that such requests have largely been refused by Jordan or received no response.

Before August, said the human rights group Gisha, which assists residents of Gaza seeking Israeli permission to travel, it was hearing of virtually no refusals. From August through January 2016, however, 58 people contacted Gisha for help, saying their requests for Jordanian permission to transit had been rejected or that they had received no answer, according to the report.