Shop shelves were lined with boxes of cigarettes, and there were so many containers of goods from Syria that a storage facility was opened in the middle of the market.

Today the shops, owned by Jordanians, are closed, the streets abandoned. A main border crossing, where goods were being transported to this impoverished town, has been officially closed.

“Jordan’s economy has been devastated because of the lack of trade toward Syria going north,” said Andrew Harper, head of the United Nations refugee agency in Jordan.

Syria’s unpredictable conflict is increasingly raising tensions among Jordanians as the economy continues to suffer, and resentment toward Syrian refugees is growing.

Jordan has drawn waves of refugees in the past, but this wave is particularly difficult. The impact of the Syrian conflict has been most felt in the north, which relies heavily on trade with Syria. Jordanians in Ramtha also have strong tribal and family ties with people in Dara’a, birthplace of the Syrian rebellion.

“The main market has turned into a ghost town and all that is left is resentment and anger,” said Sami al-Mugrabi, a Jordanian who owns a small shop in the market.

Last year, he offered tea to Syrian refugees walking by and would listen empathetically to their stories of the cities and homes they had left behind.

“No more,” he said. “We welcomed them, even in our homes, but Jordanians are suffering to find work, classrooms are crammed, hospitals can barely cope, newlyweds can’t find homes to rent, and we no longer feel like we should be the ones to suffer because of them.”

Jordanian visitors to his shop — a doctor, a border guard, a businessman and an unemployed youth — echoed his resentment.

About 450,000 Syrians refugees are registered or awaiting registration in Jordan, according to the United Nations, and 1,000 to 3,000 people continue to arrive daily.

International financial support for refugees — and for the Jordanian government — does not necessarily reach the average Jordanian family.

“What we need to do is to provide not only support at the refugee camps, communities and on the government level but also alleviate the pain for the average Jordanian family,” Mr. Harper said. “They just cannot be expected to be absorbing the consequences of the international community’s ineffectiveness in Syria by themselves.”

In a recent poll conducted by the Center for Strategic Studies, a research institute at the University of Jordan, in Amman, 70 percent of Jordanian respondents said they opposed allowing more Syrian refugees into the country.

The United Nations has predicted that there could be up to 1.2 million refugees in Jordan by the end of the year — equivalent to a fifth of the country’s population.

“There is a lot of pressure on Jordan,” said Amer Sabaileh , a political analyst at the university. “The Jordanian public seems to always pay the price when it comes to the conflicts in the region — including Iraq, Palestine and now Syria.”

Analysts warn that Jordan faces other real challenges, apart from the refugee crisis. In November of last year, serious protests erupted in the capital and other cities, after the government’s decision to increase prices of fuel and cooking oil.

“Generally, Syrians are not to blame for Jordan’s chronic shortage of water or rise in electricity prices that is expected to take place in the summer,” said Manar Rachwani, a columnist and editor at Al Ghad, an independent daily. “In fact, protests against the rise of prices in Jordan took place before the Syrian crisis even began.”

Since 2011, there has been a series of labor strikes and small but regular protests to back demands for changes in the country’s electoral law to balance the representation of urban and rural areas more fairly. There have also been demands for the creation of an electoral framework that supports credible party political development and for a serious crackdown on corruption.

“The south is in a desperate situation right now and resentment in the north is growing, so it is clear there are tensions,” Mr. Sabaileh said.

Just last week, in the city of Maan, south of Amman, there were clashes between local residents and security forces over violence that had erupted at Al-Hussein bin Talal University, which left four people dead and dozens injured.

Some warn that a prolonged crisis across the border may distract the government from implementing comprehensive restructuring. In coming months, meanwhile, water shortages are likely to increase and the government is expected to raise the price of electricity.

“If politicians are going to say it’s because of refugees, it’s inevitable that we will witness some sort of violence and anger against the Syrians here,” Mr. Rachwani said.

Sandwiched between two civil conflicts, including Iraq to the west, Jordanians continue to express fears of violence spilling over their borders.

A few Syrian rockets have landed in Jordan and some residents continue to hear the sound of gunfire and shelling in the distance. A Jordanian soldier was killed in October last year in clashes with militants trying to cross the border from Jordan into Syria, according to the Jordanian government.

“The conflict is very close, therefore the status quo in Syria is a disaster for Jordan,” said Mr. Rachwani. “There are real fears and threats, so the longer the conflict drags on, the stronger the extremist groups become.”

Spillover effects from the U.S.-led war in Iraq still reverberate in the kingdom. The Iraq war also drew militants from around the world, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who led an insurgent group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and was killed by an airstrike in 2006.

Mr. Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman in 2005 that killed 60 people.

Increasingly, regional and local media have been reporting that some Jordanians have been crossing illegally into border towns to join Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian militant group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda.

There have also been claims by the Jordanian jihadist movement that some 500 Jordanians are fighting alongside extremist groups within Syria. At least 33 have been confirmed dead.

Although the government attempts to be cautious in its policy toward Syria, that is becoming more difficult as the conflict continues. Jordan’s geographic position and weak economy can leave it squeezed between competing interests in the region.

The Jordanian public, at the same time, has expressed opposition to foreign intervention in Syria.

Last month, the U.S. secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, announced that the United States would be sending 200 troops to Jordan, a close U.S. ally, to help contain the violence. In response, a few thousand Jordanians across the country demonstrated against the deployment.

“We want the bloodshed to end, but we don’t want to see a foreign intervention in Syria and we don’t want to see American troops on our land,” said Ruweida Hassan, a member of the Jordanian Women’s Union who joined a group of demonstrators last week in central Amman.

“At the end, we blame the Arab dictators and their unjust rule, which have brought us to where we are,” she said. “But the conflict in Syria is being exploited by many countries and the people always end up paying the heavy price.”

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“Although many foreign critics have portrayed Mohammed and other Syrian directors as symbols of artistic victimization, he defiantly rejects that role. “Do you want me to play the hero?” he asked. “Do you want me to repeat two hundred times each day that my films are forbidden? This is my society. I belong to this world. I am not a victim.”

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“The more a translation app is used, the more it learns to statistically make correct associations with sounds, text and meaning. The latest translation apps incorporate voice-recognition software so you can speak as well as type in the word or phrase you want translated and then get both a text and audio response.”

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Already tested by tensions between “East Bank” tribes and ‘West Bank” Palestinians, and contested by pro-democracy activists, the country’s authorities now must respond to rising inter-tribal hostilities among the young.

“Tribal violence at universities is reaching an alarming level,” said Mohammad Nsour, a lawyer and associate professor at the faculty of law at the University of Jordan. “It has reached a level where we are reminded of the sectarian violence in Lebanon and Iraq.”

With 264,000 students enrolled in public and private universities, according to the ministry of higher education, the descent into tribalism threatens to undermine both the rule of law and Jordan’s respected academic institutions.

Nearly two years ago, academics and social experts drew up a comprehensive strategy to combat campus violence. Their report found that failures of law enforcement had enabled a hard core of troublemakers to incite repeated disturbances with impunity.

“You have to enforce the law, even ruthlessly,” said Hasan Barari, professor of international studies at the University of Jordan and a political analyst. “But there is no will.”

“At the university level, there are certain things that can be done that can mitigate the phenomena, and no one is doing that,” he added.

Nearly 40 major fights have taken place this year at universities across the kingdom, according to data reported this month by Thabhtoona, a national campaign for students’ rights. That compares with 80 such outbreaks all of last year, 61 in 2011 and 29 in 2010.

Mr. Nsour said admission policies have contributed to campus violence. Universities had been obliged to accept exceptionally underprivileged students, refugees and some unqualified students supported by the Royal Court, he said, seeding the ground for future trouble.

These students “cannot cope academically, but they still feel they can violate the system because they were not accepted based on merit,” he said. “They become frustrated and take it out on other students.”

There is a deep concern that tribal tensions in the universities will turn into a wider societal problem.

Lacking natural resources to build the economy, the government has consistently focused on developing its human potential. The literacy rate among Jordanians aged 15 to 24 stands at more than 90 percent, according to the World Bank. Jordan’s higher education system is highly regarded throughout the region.

Yet, with nearly 70 percent of the population under age 30, and unemployment mainly affecting the young, the country faces a major social and economic challenge. According to the World Bank, 25.6 percent of 20-to-24-year-olds are unemployed, of whom more than half hold a secondary certificate or a higher level of education.

Since the start of 2012, there have been some 50 protests by unemployed youths, according to Labor Watch, a local nongovernmental organization.

“This is the second consecutive year that we are suffering from violence across university campuses,” said Mustafa Al Adwan, secretary general at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, “and it is not only in a certain area or type of university, it is a nationwide problem.”

The death of an engineering student, Osama Duheisat, 21, in a tribal brawl this month at Mutah, a public university in the impoverished southern city of Karak, spilled over into widespread protests outside the campus.

“Sometimes we think it’s a social phenomena and not only related to universities,” Mr. Adwan said. “After a brawl between two students the problem extends to the areas surrounding the university.”

Hundreds of students across several universities held rallies last week to protest violence on their campuses, holding large photos of Mr. Duheisat, who is believed to have simply been a bystander at a brawl that ended in classes being suspended for two days.

Mustafa, 20, a student who did not want his last name used because he feared retribution, said he recently found himself in the middle of a fight at his university.

“I was as far away as possible from the fight that took place between two young men and it suddenly grew, became tribal and many people became involved,” said Mustafa, whom his professor described as an exemplary student.

“That same day, I was sitting in class and then a young man entered our classroom before the professor arrived,” he said. “A student pointed at me and said, ‘He is originally from the north.”’

He said the man dragged him outside the classroom, then assaulted him.

“I had nothing to do with the brawl between the two students, but it was retribution and revenge between tribes from the north and the south,” he said. “They found someone from the north in the classroom, and that was me.”

No measures had been taken against the person who assaulted him, who remained on the campus, he added.

Mr. Adwan, the education ministry official, said: “Our youth, who represent our future, are increasingly finding it hard to accept the other. What will this mean for our society in the future? We need to seriously resolve this issue. It is time to implement the laws.”

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The Jordanian government has made pledges in the past to implement political, economic, and media reforms. Although some of these reforms have taken a step backwards, digitization and enhanced access to information and news has contributed to political and social activism in society. Jordanians have created communities and contributed to “digital and social activism,” making an impact through active public participation. Due to Jordan’s geographical location and weak economy, however, the country will remain vulnerable to external shocks and regional unrest.

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AMMAN — When the Arab Spring started, Safwan al-Ma’aytah, 30, posted photos of himself online, wearing black sunglasses and carrying large signs calling for political and economic reforms.

Today, he and other members of Jordanian opposition movements say they are increasingly disillusioned by economic hardship and by regional violence across the border, especially in neighboring Syria.

Mr. Ma’aytah even stopped protesting for a while this year — but he was back on the streets last Friday in the southern city of Karak, where the government continues to face significant economic and political challenges, not least from the country’s Bedouin tribes, the historical backbone of support for the monarchy.

Also last week, an Islamist-led rally in Irbid, north of the capital, ended in violence after activists clashed with pro-government loyalists and police.

Among the factors stirring up fresh anger in the streets, demonstrators and analysts point to comments attributed to King Abdullah II, in an interview published by The Atlantic, an American news magazine, on March 18.

In the interview, the king was reported as criticizing a wide range of Jordanians, including tribal elders — whom he reportedly dismissed as “old dinosaurs,” leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and members of his own family.

A press release issued by the royal court said the king’s comments had been taken out of context, but did not deny the accuracy of the quotes.

“The tribes have long been the backbone of the regime and they have sacrificed their lives for this country, so it is hard to understand why the king would make such comments about them,” said Basil Okour, a writer and founder of Jo24, an online news Web site.

After two years of regional turmoil, the steam had appeared to be going out of Jordanian activists’ demands for political and economic change.

“At the beginning we had a list of demands about the types of reforms we wanted to see as a youth movement,” said Mr. Ma’aytah, who belongs to the national youth movement, Hirak. “It was mostly about demands for more freedoms, economic opportunities and an end to corruption,” he said in an interview. “But over the months, the movement has become weaker, our demands were not being met and employment opportunities are scarce. We are wondering if we have accomplished our goals.”

Jordan’s overall unemployment rate stands at 12.5 percent, and youth unemployment is double that, according to the Department of Statistics.

“The biggest challenge right now for Jordan is economic, but also there are external and internal factors that will determine the stability of Jordan in the near future,” said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of Al-Quds Center for Political Studies, an independent Jordanian research institute.

The conflict in Syria has sent more than 470,000 refugees across the border, straining scarce resources even further. Egypt’s political instability and violence elsewhere in the region have added to the disillusionment, leading some Jordanians to question whether the revolutions that swept the region have produced any winners so far.

Still, protests continue, including among the tribes, despite the fact that their support for the monarchy has been repaid with a disproportionate share of well-paid and prestigious posts in the army and administration.

“We are extremely worried about the political direction and the state of the economy in the country,” said Sheik Adel al-Mahameed, a tribal leader in the historically restive city of Ma’an, where several riots have taken place in the past two years. “We feel we are neglected here in Ma’an, even by the monarchy,” he said.

For Mr. Rantawi, of the Al-Quds Center, the king’s comments, and the reactions they have elicited, reflect a growing sense that the political leadership of the country has lost its way.

“The regime and the government are facing a credibility problem among Jordanians, who are growing increasingly apathetic,” Mr. Rantawi said.

“There is a deep loss of confidence right now between the government, the regime and the people.”

“Many Jordanians would generally agree with the king’s statements in the Atlantic article,” criticizing conservative supporters as obstructing reform, he added. “However, the way that the king said these words to the outside world was not appropriate. These are topics and debates that we should be having internally.”

The king’s comments equally offended Islamist opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood, which he reportedly labeled a “Masonic cult,” run by “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

Nimer al-Assaf, deputy secretary general of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, said, “We don’t believe such words would be said by the king.”

“But if it’s true, then we believe a big mistake was done,” he added, “because we are part of this country.”

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In a country where the news media are traditionally hemmed in by authoritarian legislation and self-censorship, such call-in shows are now able to address political topics and human rights issues that were unmentionable in public before the Arab Spring.

Hani al Badri, 45, is host of Wasat al-Balad, a two-and-a-half-hour live broadcast for people who find nowhere else to turn. The producers not only field their calls; they ring government officials on-air to try to resolve the issues raised.

“The show has two main roles,” said Mr. Badri, who also writes a newspaper column in Al Ghad, an independent daily. The radio show is “a platform for freedom of speech, but it’s also a place where Jordanians expect their problems to be solved.”

The morning talk shows are popular in a country where local municipalities are weighed down by bloated bureaucracies and inadequate budgets, despite a plan in 2005 to increase their efficiency.

Even this week, public workers across the kingdom have been on strike demanding better pay and benefits. And although more people than expected voted in parliamentary elections last month, Jordanians weary of fuel price increases are bracing for more economic hardship this year.

With a population of just over six million, Jordan is a relatively poor country with almost 14 percent of its people living below the poverty line, according to the Department of Statistics.

“There is a lack of accountability by public officials,” Mr. Badri said, “so we bring them on the show and present them with a clear problem at a specific location. We try to solve the caller’s problem on the spot, if we can.”

Still, some Jordanians have accused the radio hosts of courting acclaim by publicly highlighting the government’s failures to provide basic services, Mr. Badri said. And sometimes, government officials would rather avoid dealing with the media, although over time they have come to appreciate the opportunity to present the government’s views to a wider audience, he added.

On Jan. 14, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour met with directors of Jordan’s radio stations and presenters. Mr. Badri, who attended the meeting, said he took the opportunity to share a few of the concerns of his listeners: Whether to cancel the test that determines whether a student can attend university; what the repercussions will be of the prime minister’s decision to keep daylight saving time in force throughout the winter.

Daoud Kuttab, the founder and general manager of Radio Balad and AmmanNet, the first online community radio station, said radio had significant influence in Jordan. “Radio is extremely accessible and it is a democratic instrument,” he said. “You can listen to the radio at home, in the car or on your phone and anybody can call in. It is available 24 hours a day and it is free of charge.”

In 2002, the Jordanian government approved a law that ended its monopoly on broadcasting, resulting in the licensing of dozens of privately owned radio stations.

Still, “the media scene in Jordan, as it is in many Arab countries, is dominated by government-owned media,” Mr. Kuttab said. “For many years the government had a monopoly in media and in many ways they still do.”

Radio Fann, for example, is still owned by the Jordanian armed forces. Another, Amen FM, is owned by the police. Before the Arab Spring, most radio stations played primarily music.

AmmanNet, an independent station, changed the format of its morning show — “Tallet Subeh,” which means “Morning Glimpse” — from trying to solve social problems to building political and social awareness by profiling political candidates or analyzing new laws.

“Our show is now less service-oriented because we found the long-term impact is limited,” Mr. Kuttab said. “There needs to be institutional changes and obviously the popularity of these morning talk shows continues to reveal flaws in the system.”

One reason Mr. Badri’s radio show succeeds is his willingness to discuss issues that have a direct impact on listeners’ daily lives.

On a recent program, for example, he discussed the price of cooking gas cylinders which has increased 50 percent since the government cut public subsidies three months ago.

Callers have also complained about traffic violations and the cost of real estate. Others call to weigh in on current events.

Humor and Arabic pop songs are used to lighten long discussions as Jordanians make their way to work or school. In between conversations, a D.J. chooses lyrics from Arabic pop songs that echo complaints from listeners. When a caller said he felt neglected by the government, the background music was a love song about abandonment.

“When the show first began, we told government officials that it’s better they respond to caller requests and go on the record,” said Mr. Badri, who hosted the show for nearly a year. “Some officials now realize the power of the media because ordinary citizens have found an outlet to hold them accountable.”

Mr. Badri said he worried less about censorship these days, and more about the lack of access to information the public has a right to know.

“For now we will continue to put pressure on officials,” he said, “and talk about taboo issues as well.”

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Scripts can decorate objects made from a range of materials, including acrylic glass, wood, clay, stone and copper. The availability of diverse materials, and the use of new color schemes and modern styles are reviving this tradition and in the process helping to create a sense of cultural identity.

“There is a lot of interest in Arabic calligraphy, particularly when it comes to the more edgy and modern interpretations,” said Samar Habayeb, the chief executive of Silsal, an upscale design house in Amman that has incorporated Arabic calligraphy in most of its collections.

“We are moving along with the times and incorporating Arabic calligraphy on a variety of products in modern ways,” she said.

One of Silsal’s more popular collections is named Tarateesh, Arabic for “splash,” and inspired, Ms. Habayeb said, by the drip paintings of the American artist Jackson Pollock.

The collection is designed with bold Arabic letters, standing alone or elegantly joined, surrounded by splashes of bright color.

In the Arabic language, the way letters are written changes according to whether they stand alone or occur in the middle or at the end of a word. Short vowels, represented by a set of marks above or below letters, are sometimes used in calligraphy for design purposes.

An emphasis on geometric patterns and calligraphy was born of Islam’s denunciation of figurative images. Figurative depictions, especially those of prophets, are still shunned, particularly by followers of Sunni Islam.

Poems and proverbs are popular subjects for calligraphic designs: Most Arab poetry, written in classical Arabic, is understood by all literate Arabs, transcending dialects and regionalisms.

Naqsh Design House, also in Amman, known for its contemporary minimalist style, has incorporated Arabic calligraphy in its paintings, handbags and accessories. Some include the words of Arab poets like Mahmood Darwish or Gibran Khalil Gibran.

Verses by the Lebanese-American poet Elia Abu Madi spread across 10 paintings that cover Naqsh’s walls. The verses speak of how well one should live, rather than how long. The polychromatic letters are painted vertically, horizontally and even upside down. An emphasized word in the poem is enlarged using a bright color.

“It has become a modern art form that attracts people from all over the region and at the same time emphasizes an Arab identity,” said Shireen Abu Dail, 34, who founded Naqsh with other members of her family nearly two years ago.

A decade of rapid changes in the Middle East has raised the interest of international curators in the region, with attention to Islamic art and calligraphy. Calligraphic work has emerged dealing with religious, political, social, and even cultural issues.

There is a visible struggle to create a contemporary Arab cultural identity through artwork, including calligraphy, said Saleh Barakat, the founder of Agial Art Gallery in Beirut and an expert in modern Arab art.

“The Middle Eastern artist is fighting internally to convince his or her own people of the importance of art and externally by trying to get the West to acknowledge and validate his or her work,” Mr. Barakat said in a lecture this month in Amman.

Silsal’s ceramics have been featured at the British Museum in London in an exhibit on the Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj. A high-quality handmade ceramic bowl or plate, with a calligraphic design, can take several weeks to make.

Considered luxury items because of relatively high prices, collections from some local design houses have found a market outside Jordan. Other producers of simple, crisp designs in more colloquial Arabic that are less expensive have also found an export market.

Lara Kawash, 40, does not own a gallery or a design house but her sentimental word choices, use of bright colors and affordable prices have built her a following as far afield as Egypt.

Items that Ms. Kawash and her partners have designed and produced at her small workshop in Amman include a set of tea glasses in striking colors, engraved with the Arabic words tea and mint, as mint tea is a popular drink across the Middle East.

“We try to relate to the customers and use simple colloquial Arabic,” said Ms. Kawash, who sells through various outlets and on the Internet. “Most importantly, I try to make the words relevant to the product, words that also have universal meanings.”

Some items include popular song lyrics. A large flower vase, for example, reads: “I will only buy these flowers for my love.”

The rising popularity of calligraphy carries the risk that it may become too fashionable — and eventually go out of style.

“There is a lot of competition with other designers since now everyone is doing this type of art,” Ms. Kawash said. “To advance, you have to always have your own style, but to survive you also need to do something very unique.”

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“There are publications and broadcasts and news agencies (such as this one) that are wedded to objective reporting, investigation and rational analysis, but they are in the minority, and a lot of them are finding it hard to make a living these days.”

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“The man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden sat in a wicker chair in my backyard, wondering how he was going to feed his wife and kids or pay for their medical care.”

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“It was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me.”

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AMMAN — The political turmoil in the Middle East over the last two years has not been kind to Jordan’s king, Abdullah II, who has faced domestic protests and public discontent.

Still, the king scored a tactical victory over his most serious political challenger, the Muslim Brotherhood, in last week’s elections for the lower house of Parliament. Voters largely ignored the Brotherhood’s call for an election boycott, an outcome that appeared to offer respite to the beleaguered monarchy.

Instead of being a nonevent, the elections produced a 56 percent turnout, nearly four percentage points higher than the 2010 parliamentary elections.

The high participation followed promises by Abdullah to consult Parliament, for the first time, in choosing a new prime minister. Jordanians hope this will lead to a more open political system.

“The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan have been dealt a blow,” said Osama Rantesi, deputy chief editor and political columnist at Arab Al Yawm, an independent daily newspaper. “Protesters coming out in their support have been decreasing, their rhetoric seems less appealing two years after the Arab Spring.”

Jordan’s election results coincided with a wave of deadly violence in Egypt, which is led by a Muslim Brotherhood veteran, President Mohamed Morsi, as that country marked the second anniversary of the start of the protests that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down as president.

Revolutions that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and spread across the Middle East have also inspired small but persistent protests and labor strikes in Jordan. The chaos and violence in neighboring countries have dampened the debate about reform and the protests in Jordan. Last year, there were fears of serious political upheaval. Opposition leaders have held back for fear that change might be worse than an unsatisfactory status quo.

“Jordanians think change in the region right now means chaos, instability, civil war and destruction — they are asking, ‘Is there any other way?”’ said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of Al-Quds Center for Political Studies.

Two days after the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood canceled a planned protest without explanation. The movement still insists that it has not suffered a setback and that the turnout figures, along with the whole voting procedure, were rigged.

“This is a fabricated election process because the electoral law itself is flawed and we were right in boycotting the elections,” said Murad Adayleh, an executive committee member of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. “We will continue on the same path of protesting peacefully until our demands for a more representative government is met and against widespread corruption.”

Despite these claims, it seems clear that the Jordanian government, which offered a package of constitutional changes in response to opposition demands, has won some breathing room.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Abdullah described the election turnout as a success and said the next step would be to build political parties, based on political positions, to compete in future elections.

He also promised to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan but claimed that the group was “not a serious problem whatsoever” and had the weakest standing of any other Muslim Brotherhood organization in the Middle East.

In another setback for the Muslim Brotherhood, more moderate Islamic candidates who decided to run for Parliament, despite the calls for a boycott, won 17 seats out of 150. Most of the seats in the newly elected house went to tribal leaders, government loyalists and independent businessmen. But a few small political parties, many of them formed just before the election, also gained a foothold in the assembly.

AmmanNet, a local community radio station, reported this week that the more moderate Islamists who did well in the elections intended to form a parliamentary bloc that could one day compete for grassroots popular support against the Brotherhood.

“These elections were done to reinvigorate the political legitimacy of the regime and it largely succeeded,” said Mr. Rantesi, the editor and columnist.

Despite the election outcome, the king still faces other problems.

This year’s budget deficit, for example, is projected to reach about $3 billion. It will likely require austerity measures and price increases of the sort that last year provoked Jordan’s most serious demonstrations since the start of the Arab Spring.

Jordan’s geographical position also makes it vulnerable to external shocks. A flood of refugees from Syria, exceeding 300,000, is also straining the government’s limited resources and the rate of youth unemployment is almost double the overall unemployment rate, which is 13 percent.

Still, the voter turnout shows that Jordanians are willing to give the government a chance to deliver on its promises of a more participatory political process and to deal with the weak economy.

The new lower house will also have the highest percentage of women in Jordan’s history: about 13 percent.

“The Jordanians came out and voted to test the regime’s will for political reform,” Mr. Rantesi said. “By voting, they are saying there will be no more excuses to slow down the reform path and this may be the last chance for them.”

Still, other analysts say that the outcome of the elections shows more that tribal and national origins continue to trumps considerations of policy or party affiliation. The new house, like previous ones, remains an assembly of individuals rather than parties, and one that continues to favor the so-called East Bankers, or tribal Jordanians, over the urban, largely Palestinian, population.

“I wouldn’t have voted if it wasn’t for my cousin, and I don’t think anything will really change,” Suleiman Jraisat, a businessman, said as he stood outside a rural polling station on election day near a small crowd.

In the coming days, Parliament will submit a list of names from which the king has pledged to chose the prime minister. The prime minister will name his cabinet. But in a further display of democratic process, the chosen executive will seek parliamentary ratification through a vote of confidence.

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