Jordan there seems to be a genuine struggle for power.

There's protest too in Jordan: the king rules on his own and relies on the support of the wealthy Palestinian elite, while the majority is suffering from increasing commodity prices

​​ Hottinger: The crucial point in Jordan is: will there be a regime in which the king is involved, or will he rule the country on his own, as he has done until now. In addition to the concentration of power, he has also angered the Jordanian tribes in that he has let himself be supported by an "upper class" of Palestinian families. Economically speaking, they are often more competent and have succeeded in getting rich more quickly. They are the only source of financial support for the royal family.that revolution may have failed and we ended up with the German Empire for a time, but it led to a deep change in mentality which took root in the people. That's what will happen in the Arab world.

Arnold Hottinger was born in Basle, Switzerland, in 1926. Between 1961 and 1991 he reported on the Arab and Muslim world for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung from Beirut, Madrid und Nikosia. Among his books are "The Arabs: Their History, Culture and Place in the Modern World", (new edition, 1982), as well as, in German, "Gottesstaaten und Machtpyramiden" ("Theocracies and Power Structures" – 2000), "Islamische Welt" ("The Muslim World" – 2004) und "Die Länder des Islam" ("The Countries of Islam" – 2008).

Translated from the German by Michael Lawton

Editors: Arian Fariborz, Lewis