Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
An opposition protest in Amman, Jordan, on Friday.
In a letter from his deathbed, the king’s father, King Hussein, signaled a preference for Hamzah, the eldest son of the fourth and final queen, who the king wrote had been “envied since childhood because he was close to me.” And though Hamzah was still in school, the king insisted that he be named crown prince in line to succeed Abdullah, Hamzah’s eldest half brother — though the new king later rescinded that title.
Now, 13 years after King Hussein’s death and King Abdullah’s ascension, the fantasy of a handover to Hamzah, 32, has captured the imagination of a resurgent protest movement that poses the biggest threat in decades to the stability of Jordan, a pivotal American ally. This dream of a transition to a new king within the same dynasty, critics say, is an apt reflection of the ambiguous character of the protests, animated by the democratic spirit of the Arab Spring uprisings but also by nostalgia.
“There is a popular outcry for Hamzah,” said an organizer in the two-year-old secular opposition network Hirak, which began raising demands for political reform and local development after the start of the Arab Spring revolts. (Its name comes from the Arabic word for movement.)
Speaking on the condition of anonymity — promoting Prince Hamzah has landed at least one journalist in jail, and on Sunday 89 people were arrested and charged with fomenting violent protests — the organizer said Hirak activists were planning to hold up pictures of Hamzah and the other princes at protests to suggest intrafamily change.
The political tremors are disconcerting for American policy makers because of the role Jordan has played as a dependable ally and a stabilizing buffer zone in a volatile region. Jordan is the only Arab country besides Egypt to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and, in contrast to Egypt, the Islamist party in Jordan that has made up the principal political opposition has staunchly opposed the pact. Also, Jordan sits between Iraq and Syria, and it has absorbed vast numbers of refugees, including hundreds of thousands fleeing the Syrian strife.
Supporters of King Abdullah argue that the attention paid to Prince Hamzah is evidence that, in contrast to the other Arab Spring movements, the protests here are essentially conservative. The wave of demonstrations that broke out last week was set off not by any expressed yearning for freedom, they say, but by the end of fuel subsidies that threatened to bankrupt the country. His loyalists also say that at its base the protest movement is driven by opposition to King Abdullah’s program of economic liberalization and privatization, a sharp break with King Hussein.
Those initiatives have been a threat to members of the old clans based on the East Bank of the Jordan River who were King Hussein’s core supporters, who made up the backbone of his security services and who benefited the most from public-sector jobs and patronage. The same clans and towns are now the wellspring of Hirak.
The opposition movement has directed special hatred toward King Abdullah’s glamorous Palestinian wife, Queen Rania, whose influence the organizers have cited as one of their top complaints. Tensions between East Bank natives and Palestinian immigrants, who make up about half of Jordan’s population, are the major fissure in Jordanian politics. And while East Bank natives have dominated the public sector, Palestinians have flourished in the private sector and stand to gain from liberalization.
The king views Hirak as advocating “the status quo,” one diplomat who has talked to him said.
But many of the demonstrators who turned out for four days of protests in Amman and other cities last week said that economic grievances were beginning to translate into new demands for democratic political change, toward the adoption of a constitutional monarchy like Britain’s.
Although the fuel price increases were the catalyst, the demonstrations included the first explicit calls for the king’s ouster, as protesters took up the signature Arab Spring chant about “the fall of the regime,” even though that can be a capital offense here. Indeed, a wide range of Jordanians, not just demonstrators, said the kingdom’s censorship and political repression undercut the king’s pledges that, after years of rigged elections and false promises, he was about to usher in democratic change.
The demonstrations also drew a broad cross-section of young people and professionals, just as the first riots of the Arab Spring did in Tunisia and Egypt almost two years ago.
Jordan Protesters Dream of Shift to Prince Hamzah
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Jordan Protesters Dream of Shift to Prince Hamzah
