Jordan - New Government Resorts to the Oldest Trick in the Book

Things are not looking too dandy for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The East Bank bedouin tribes are demanding a greater say in the affairs of state of the kingdom which is ruled by the house of Hashm, which was transplanted from Hejaz after the First World War. There has been much criticism of the king's Palestinian wife and her lavish, wasteful lifestyle. They also demand a faster transition towards a more restrictive constitutional Monarchy. Currently the king has authority to dismiss both the executive branch and the legislative branch of governmnet, on an ad-hoc basis.

From the other side, the country's majority Palestinian population are continuously treated as some sort of an underclass. Their ability to climb the military ladder, as well as the state bureaucracy is greatly impeded by the bedouins. More recently, there is a trend of expropriating Palestinians and stripping them off from their Jordanian citizenship. A friend of this blog, Mudar Zahran frequently voices the concern of his Palestinian/Jordanian community.

Mudar also recently wrote an excellent post on how regressive Arab regimes use Israel bashing as the opiate of the masses. It seems that the new cabinet in Jordan has already caught on!