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Jordan's King is Cleaning Out the Stables
(Ha'aretz) Zvi Bar'el - The coronation of King Abdullah in 1999 came at time when Jordan was at the height of an economic crisis. "When the promises of investments, employment, and trade were not realized, the peace agreement began to play very well into the hands of its opponents, especially the members of the burgeoning Islamic bloc," says a former senior Jordanian official. "On the one hand, we have a peace agreement with Israel...and on the other, we have trade unions that take the law into their own hands. They have imposed a boycott on Israel, they have journalists that visit Israel removed from the Journalists Union, engineers that have ties with Israeli companies removed from the Engineers Union, and in this way, they systematically act not only against ties with Israel, but also completely against the interests of Jordan." "In absence of a parliament [It was dispersed about a year and a half ago] and freedom of the press, the unions are the alternative to political parties and the public views their political activities as a kind of substitute for a parliament," says a Jordanian commentator.