Tag: Church of the Nazarene

March 23, 2019 Leaving the Nazarene Church, I meet up with a reporter from the Electronic Intifada, Tamara Nassar, who is excited to inform me that this week is Israeli Apartheid Week, organized by the Jordanian BDS chapter. Etharrak condemned the filming in a letter to the Royal Film Commission of Jordan, an official body that promotes and facilitates foreign film and television production in the country. Activists have demanded answers from the film commission on the nature of the TV series and the authorization it received to film in Amman. Jordan has “the second highest share of refugees compared to its population in the world.” More than two million registered Palestinian refugees live in the country, but most (not all) have full citizenship. With the recent cybercrime law, the government has loosened the terms in which citizens can be arrested for comments they make online. She explains that Palestinians from 1948 were able to obtain Jordanian citizenship as were those refugees who were living in the West Bank and fled in 1967. Citizenship is conferred through the father. We sip thick Turkish coffee overlooking a peachy sunset and learn of the recent protest focused against the building of a gas pipeline, part of the “Jordanian Campaign to Stop the Zionism Gas Deal.” Apparently the government owned electricity company, NEPCO, cut a pipe line deal with Israel to buy natural gas. The pipe line will stretch “from Jordan’s northern border with Israel to the Mafraq governorate in the northeast.” By 2020, gas extracted from the Leviathan fields in the Mediterranean off of Tel Aviv will be sent by pipeline across Jordan. Sixty percent of the fields are owned by three Israeli companies and 40% by the US company, Noble Energy, which is leading the extraction.