Embassy personnel in Amman to return after weekend

Foreign ministry announces return of diplomats after early evacuation due to concern of demonstration against the embassy planned on Facebook.

By HERB KEINON
Amman 311 (photo credit: Eldad Brin)
Amman 311
(photo credit: Eldad Brin)
Israel's diplomats will return to Amman at the end of the weekend as usual, a Foreign Ministry official said Thursday, after Israel's personnel there came home a day earlier than scheduled because of concern over a demonstration against the embassy that was planned on Facebook.
All diplomatic personnel at the embassy, with the exception of the number 2 official there, left Amman Wednesday.  Generally, because of overall security concerns and the short distance between the countries, the embassy staff – whose families are not with them during the week – return to Israel each Thursday for the weekend.
RELATED:Egypt's press blames Israeli for Eilat terror attackIsrael evacuates embassy in Jordan ahead of protests
The decision Wednesday to order an early departure of embassy personnel was taken just days after the 13-hour rampage at the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Friday, during which Israeli six security guards locked themselves behind a steel door while mobs ransacked the embassy.
Egyptian commandos rescued those six security guards from the Cairo embassy, as protesters broke into archives and threw documents from the building's windows into the street below where demonstrators were celebrating.
The call for the protest in Amman comes amid increasing voices in Jordan calling for an end to the normalization of ties between the two countries.  Israeli officials have said recently that the Jordanian government has not done enough to quell those voices, and that this has led to a significant decrease in contact and trade between the two countries.