SALT, Jordan – After a government hospital here ran out of oxygen last month and nine Covid-19 patients died, the country’s monarch King Abdullah II paid a brief visit to this small farming town. Dressed in a military uniform, he denounced local officials in front of TV cameras.
Earlier, an enraged mob had hit their fists and shoes on a vehicle with a lawyer, forcing it to run.
The next day, Salt received a very different royal visit from the king’s half-brother, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein. The prince, a critic of the king and his reign, visited the homes of the deceased and spoke to their families. Two weeks later he was invited to return for a traditional party with residents.
The dueling visits – as Jordan struggles to contain the pandemic and resolve a sputtering economy – turned out to be one of the last straws in a long-running rivalry between the king and his younger half-brother, according to people on both sides of the split, in a nation that is an important US ally.
Within days, Prince Hamzah was effectively placed under house arrest and accused by the government of undermining national security, a move that has pushed politics in the desert kingdom sandwiched between Israel and the occupied West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria. turned upside down. He has not been seen in public since then. The palace says the prince remains at home “under the care” of the king.