Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Jordan has been contending with a flood of Syrian refugees, straining an already beleaguered economy. Moreover, the rapid spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) across Iraq has substantially increased Jordan's vulnerability to extremist infiltration and terrorist attacks. All this while, King Abdullah has continued to champion a reform programme - at least in name - to address Jordan's most salient political and economic vulnerabilities following the Arab uprisings of 2011. So the last thing that Jordan needed this summer was a war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. Of all these problems, none threatened to expose more of Jordan's internal vulnerabilities than a brutal, extended battle between Hamas and Israel, with daily images of Palestinian children slain by Israeli bombs. Such conflict brings to the surface the distance between the monarchy and its supporters on the one hand and Jordanians of Palestinian descent on the other. Not all Palestinian-Jordanians support Hamas, and Jordan itself has no official ties to the group, though the king or his emissaries maintain contacts with the Hamas leadership. But certainly, when forced to confront the unpopular Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty or the monarchy's close relations with Israel's leaders, the sympathies of the Jordanian public lie strongly with the Palestinian people.
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