GAZA REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan -- Gloom hung over the house where Amin's adult daughter had died of an unknown disease. Rain was leaking through the tarpaulin that served as a roof in half of the two-room structure of mud brick and cinder blocks where 15 people live.

So bitterness was not far from the surface when Amin and a handful of fellow Palestinian refugees gathered to discuss their flight from Israel in 1948. "Jewish gangsters came and occupied our village, and we were forced out," he said.

His anger may be unsurprising in one of Jordan's impoverished refugee camps, a town of 35,000 near the ancient city of Jerash, 40 km north of the capital, Amman. But the sentiment hints at the stresses that a majority Palestinian population brings to Jordan, one of only two Arab states that have signed peace treaties with Israel (Egypt is the other). The fragile peace is fraying in Jordan as Israel's military campaign grinds on in the West Bank.

About 60 percent of Jordan's 5.1 million population classifies itself as Palestinian. Ethnically and linguistically, they are identical with native Jordanians. Many are active in business and the professions, and half live not in camps, but in Amman and other cities (even Jordan's queen, Rania Al-Abdallah, comes from a Palestinian family). Yet memories are long, and many are bitter at Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

"Why did they sign a treaty with Israel?" asked Taisir Diab, a Palestinian lawyer in Amman. "It's simple. The government just did it. If they asked us, it never would have happened."

Public anger tends to be at its highest after Friday prayer services, and they echo the discontent of demonstrations throughout the Arab world (a recent protest in Morocco brought 500,000 people into the streets). Abdel Qader Abdel Khazem, an Amman prayer leader, whipped up a crowd before a recent demonstration that turned violent.

"O Arab leaders," he said, "your people are boiling like water in a pot. You have to take them on your side against your enemy before they turn against you."

The protests don't just come from the mosques, however. Magi, 50, a Bethlehem-born Christian, said she joined the demonstration because she was enraged by "Israeli brutality in dealing with civilians, looting personal property, and bombing the Church of the Nativity."

Israelis have described their military campaign as a battle for national survival after a series of suicide bombings massacred scores of Jewish civilians in recent weeks.

The Jordanian government is nervous about the power of Palestinians and their sympathizers, and it has clamped down on protests. Jordan's prime minister, Ali Abu al-Ragheb, said the country has experienced hundreds of demonstrations. The disorder could harm the country, he warned in a televised interview.

"We are confident that our situation is stable and that our people are aware that Jordan's stability is important," he said. "A strong Jordan is more capable of supporting its brothers in Palestine."

Palestinians came to Jordan in several waves. About 100,000 crossed into what was then Transjordan following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank pushed a further 350,000 Palestinians into exile, according to the United Nations.

Further generations have been born in Jordan or moved here after working in the Persian Gulf states. Among them are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were working in Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion. Many cheered Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's attack, only to find themselves kicked out when a U.S.-led alliance beat back the Iraqis. And many now want to see Jordan join in a "jihad," or holy war, against Israel.

While those still living in refugee camps feel marginalized, many Palestinians have entered mainstream society. David, who runs a travel agency, said his father fled for what he thought was a week or two when the Jewish state was established in 1948 (like many Palestinians interviewed, he withheld his last name). Born in Amman, David holds a Jordanian passport.

He says he wouldn't move to Israel even if he had the chance, for his life and business are in Jordan. Yet he is resentful that peace between Jordan and Israel has failed to produce dividends for Jordan's Palestinians. He had hoped that they would be free to travel to Israel and the occupied territories, but many find it impossible to visit.

The Palestinians who came from the Gulf states sparked a land boom when they invested in Jordan. "We brought money from the Gulf," David said. "Now we are losing it here."

The Palestinian issue can rear its head anywhere in Jordan. In October, an Anti-Normalization Committee opposed to peace published a blacklist of companies and individuals that do business with Israel. When one restaurateur sued, he had trouble finding a lawyer. The government, in turn, jailed some of those who published the list, said Fahed Fanek, a Jordanian expert in Palestinian affairs. Ironically, most of those blacklisted were Palestinians, he added.

Nevertheless, Fanek said, sometimes the opposition to peace is stronger among native Jordanians, often called "east Jordanians."

"The Palestinians have met Israelis and lived among them," he said. "To east Jordanians, Israelis are all monsters."

Tensions between Palestinians and indigenous Jordanians can spill into sports. Most Palestinians back the soccer team Al-Wahdat, while Jordanians support Faiseli. Yet Palestinians say police are heavy-handed toward their Al-Wahdat supporters. After one game, truncheon-wielding police broke the bones of six players, the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported Nov. 29. According to the paper, an Al-Wahdat player asked, "Why are they always beating our players and supporters?"

Friction between refugees and Jordanians came to a head in a 1970 coup attempt by the Palestinian Liberation Organization against the government. For 10 days in "black September," the PLO and its factions clashed with the Jordanian army. After its defeat, the PLO leadership and thousands of refugees fled to Lebanon.

These days, Israel's military response to terror tends to unite Palestinians and Jordanians, Fanek said. Yet despite the widespread hostility to the Jewish state, Israeli officials believe the peace with Jordan will survive the current violence. That the countries' relationship still exists shows that they have a strong basis, said one Israeli diplomat.

But the diplomat added that it is unrealistic to expect Israel to open its borders to the refugees. "You cannot expect Israel to commit suicide and welcome all these refugees back," he said. "If the Palestinian leadership has a vision, it would say, 'Come back and build a new state.' "

Some Palestinian have fled to Jordan after recent clashes with Israel. Muammar is a 28-year-old taxi driver from the West Bank, but when he was 16, he and 12 friends attacked some Israeli soldiers with Molotov cocktails. Muammar says the soldiers arrested him, hung him by his feet for hours and beat and electrocuted him.

More recently, he worked for a Palestinian Authority security unit, rounding up and interrogating Palestinians suspected of being informants. Asked if he tortured them, he replied, "Yes."

"My job stems from a national expectation for freedom and sovereignty and independence," he said. "And these (Israeli) spies are preventing this. So I felt duty-bound to find them and extract this information."

Israeli troops arrested him again for three months last summer, so he fled to Jordan upon his release.

Sammy, a 41-year-old storekeeper in Gaza, was born in the West Bank but fled when Israel captured the territory in 1967. A thoughtful man with a master's degree in psychology, he says he has trouble finding work except for occasional teaching jobs in other Arab countries. So he sells luncheon meat, chocolate bars and Coca-Cola in a dusty store in the camp.

He takes time to express his sympathy to Americans for the Sept. 11 attacks. But he says the Palestinians in Jordan's camps are a lost people.

"Initially, Jordan stood by the Palestinian people," he said. "It took them in and welcomed them, and we are grateful for that. But Jordan has forgotten us."