I think you're quite right that Abdullah's circumstances make it very difficult to judge what any official Jordanian public pronouncements mean or what their real audience is. It's also worth looking at Jordan's borders sometime: other than Israel, his neighbors are Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
I wonder very much what effect the removal of Saddam and (hopefully) the thorough intimidation of Syria will have on Abdullah's role in the Middle East. After Black September, extreme prejudice against Palestinian militancy must surely be a deep if hidden principle of Hashemite policy. And it's pretty clear that the Hashemites are capable of doing normal business with Israel, even if it's without a lot of affection.
Without two Arab terror states on his flanks, capable of punishing cooperation with Israel, Abdullah might be able to play a constructive role in managing the West Bank Palestinians and even sell it to his people as helping to free them from Israel.
It's also important to remember that a western victory in Iraq will have an effect on the Arab masses as well as on Arab governments - and all the experience we have says it will not be, as the Left says (and hopes), to inflame the "street" and make it unmanageable. All experience is that the street gets less violent the stronger we seem. So Abdullah's domestic dynamics might well be different after the lightning falls on Saddam.
It's refreshing to see someone that does make life to be simple. People seem to throw around their opinions and make them seem like fact or reality. The reality is when we see a decision made whether it be Roe v Wade or the Versailles treaty after WWI people want to think that it's a simple 1 + 1 = 2 situation.. there are many many factors that weigh into decisions.. why you think state leaders have so many people that give them advice.. Bush doesn't know everything.. he has a think tank.. a group of people that will throw him every single possible situation.. so you come up with a plan that like a census has a certain +/- range of certainly that you think is acceptable. I wish people would understand for once that you just can't have Israel for instance move the entire population of Palistine into the surrounding countries.. sure it sounds good.. but nobody really thinks.. or even if they did think.. really know the consquences of those actions.. this is why we have governments.. think tanks.. and not a bunch of Hitlers running the world...