Amman  - To ask a Jordanian what football team he supports is to venture onto sensitive political turf.

"Yes, yes, it's true. Whatever you've heard, it's true," Samir, a young university graduate from Amman, said when asked if all Jordanians of Palestinian origin support al-Wihdat, one of the two main football clubs, and all Jordanians of non-Palestinian origin support the other, al-Faisali.

Samir, a Jordanian whose family hails from a village near Bethlehem, supports al-Wihdat, of course.

Speaking quickly, he accused security forces of singling out al- Wihdat football hooligans when they clash with al-Faisali hooligans, while letting the al-Faisali supporters off lightly.

Then he seemed to remember himself.

"Is there anyone from the government here?" he asked, looking over both shoulders in an Amman restaurant. "Excuse me for a moment."

When he returned, he resolutely changed the topic of conversation, and agreed to be quoted only by his first name.

If ordinary Jordanians are cautious when they talk about the subject, it is possibly because they remember the case of senior statesman Adnan Abu Odeh. During his tenure as head of the Royal Court from 1991-1992, Abu Odeh, who was born in the West Bank city of Nablus, was arguably one of the three most powerful men in Jordan.

But this did not stop prosecutors from interrogating him in November 2006 on charges of "sedition" and "fomenting sectarian strife" for telling al-Jazeera that Palestinians accounted for "more than 60 per cent of the population," but did not have "proportional representation" in the parliament or in the government. Prosecutors did not hold him, and the charges were quickly dropped.

Officially, there are no Palestinian-Jordanians or Jordanians of Jordanian origin - there are only Jordanians. This orthodoxy is carefully preserved by the government and, to an extent, by Jordanians themselves.

On Friday, Palestinians in Jordan and around the world marked the 61st anniversary of what they remember as the "Nakba" (catastrophe) - the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel and rendered at least 700,000 Palestinians homeless.

Many of them arrived in Jordan, where they settled in refugee camps that eventually became permanent villages or districts of larger towns. The event helped define the modern state of Jordan, which had become independent after the end of the British Mandate only two years earlier.

Palestinian-Jordanians hold the same passports as their neighbours whose families can trace their roots to Jordan, and they report few instances of discrimination. They have risen to the top of the Jordanian business world and, albeit less often than their non- Palestinian compatriots, to senior government positions.

The state of relations between Palestinian- and non-Palestinian Jordanians now is a far cry from the days of the "Black September" of 1970, when the Jordanian army crushed a Palestinian revolt with artillery and tanks. Thousands died in the fighting.

Today, the rivalry between al-Wihdat and al-Faisali is one of the few ways the divide surfaces. The al-Wihdat club hails from a "brick- and-mortar" refugee camp by the same name on the outskirts of Amman. The iconic dome of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem crowns its logo. The president of the club, Tariq Khouri, is a Palestinian member of parliament.

By contrast, al-Faisali's president is Sheikh Sultan al-Adwan, a prominent landowner and the scion of an important Jordanian tribe.

During the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, that began in 2000, some al-Faisali fans cheered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a way of taunting the al-Wihdat fans.

In one match during the Intifada, after al-Faisali supporters shouted obscene slurs against the mothers of Palestinian "martyrs," players from both sides walked off the field and refused to continue playing.

Police and the clubs themselves have taken stringent measures to ensure that the heady emotions of football, politics, and conflict do not combine to turn football matches into political rallies.

"Jordan is quiet. All of us want to keep it that way," Raed, a 46- year-old merchant and al-Faisali supporter, said. "A Wihdat fan will blame al-Faisali for anything - for the rising price of petrol, even for an earthquake!"

During the last season, security was heavy at matches, particularly during Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip four months ago, and both clubs have enforced discipline on their supporters. Brawny male cheerleaders now lead fans of both sides in gentler, less political chants.

"Don't get carried away," cautioned Tariq Mohammed, a 30-year-old computer engineer who supports al-Faisali. "We may shout a little bit at the matches, but afterwards we all go drink tea together." (dpa)