Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"With a poverty-stricken capital (Amman), a lack of oil reserves, and possession of only a small and remote outlet to the Gulf of Aqaba, Jordan (population 7.7 million) has survived with U.S., British, and other aid. It lost its West Bank territory in a 1967 war with Israel, including its sector of Jerusalem (then the kingdom’s second-largest city). No third country has a greater stake in a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians than does Jordan, especially because Palestinians form the majority here. Jordan did not experience the kind of upheaval that shook many other Arab countries in 2011 because the monarchy had enjoyed widespread support and government policies lacked the level of repression found in Syria or Tunisia. Yet there were some demonstrations to air grievances, and King Abdullah II had to dismiss his cabinet to quell the protests. Jordan’s longterm challenges are primarily economic. The wider regional turmoil has not only deterred tourism (which fell by a third between 2011 and 2015) but brought in more than 600,000 refugees across Jordan’s northern border with war-ravaged Syria." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 259]