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Well, there is a sharp social division between true "Jordanians" and Palestinians.

The "Pallies" are considered the N***ers in Jordan.

That said, I can tell you this from my own, personal experience.

There was group of maybe half a dozen Jordanians who went to the same engineering school I did, back in the early 1980s. They were all more or less devout Muslims, and I did get a kick out of talking to them about their religion. It seemed that, from a religious philosophy point of view, they had their heads on straight.

But that was eclipsed by this aspect of their character that I would called "the tribalism." They were very, very insistent on all these "traditions" like women as second-class citizens, etc.

They looked on American women as "whores." One of them, the most outspoken, mentioned to me that he had asked his parents to allow the girl from his village to whom he was betrothed--this apparently occurred when they were young children--to go ahead and marry him, and come to live with him while he finished school, because he was very lonely.

They refused, reminding him that he had to finish his schooling, and then serve his two years compulsory military service before he could be married.

So he said he was just going to find "some American girl who can live with me while I'm here." He had no problem with the notion that he could have a sexual relationship with an American girl, because "all American girls are whores, you can tell by the way they dress."

Anyway, the final thing that was striking about them was how much they hated Israel and Jews. They would constantly complain about "the criminal Begin" (this was when Menachim Begin was still Prime Minister of Israel) and they would predict that "Sadat is going to die some day for his treachery" (which also happened, of course).

Just a weird bunch. I never got that creepy feeling with the Iranians or the Egyptians that I knew in school. The Jordanians were bad; the only ones worse were the Saudis and the Iraqis, who would have nothing whatsoever to do with any Americans.

Oh, and I also knew a few Palestinians. They were mostly okay, ironically enough.