The deportation to Qatar of four leaders of the militant Palestinian Hamas movement on Sunday has demonstrated King Abdullah's determination to assert full control over non-Jordanian political movements with a presence in the kingdom.
The exiles included Hamas's politburo head, Mr Khaled Mishaal, who escaped an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997, and its spokesman, Mr Ibrahim Gosheh. The measure is considered to be "temporary", since the kingdom cannot permanently exclude its own citizens.
In August Jordanian security forces detained 24 Hamas activists and shut down the movement's office, reportedly at the instigation of the Palestine Authority and Israel. The other 20 were freed from prison and allowed to go home.
The deportation of the militants is seen as a warning to radical elements in Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood to tone down their attacks on the regional peace process and join the movement's moderate mainstream.
An informed source told The Irish Times that the influential brotherhood, which tried and failed to mediate a compromise, could retaliate against the king by opposing his legislative programme in parliament.
The brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Action Front, which commands the support of a third of the electorate, has already declared its opposition to the abrogation of a law acquitting men who murder women accused of sexual improprieties to preserve family honour.
The dying King Hussein named Abdullah, his eldest son, Crown Prince in February.
"People underestimate him," said a former Jordanian ambassador to London, Mr Ibrahim Izzedin, whose posting coincided with the king's studies at Sandhurst and Oxford. "He is an intelligent man who would have studied law if he had been allowed to do what he wanted," Mr Izzedin said, "but his father insisted he go into the army".
Most Jordanians were impressed by the king's speech from the throne delivered at the opening of the current session of parliament. He addressed Jordan's severe economic ills and the painful remedies the kingdom needed to adopt to cure them.
Jordan suffers from a stagnant economy, with a growth rate of 2 per cent which cannot keep up with a 3 per cent annual population increase. International donors insist that the kingdom privatise and cut the large civil service.
On the domestic front, "more legislation has been adopted in the past eight months than in the previous 10 years," said Mr Abdullah Hasanat, editor of the Jordan Times, while on the external front the king has managed to reschedule a large proportion of Jordan's $7 billion (more than £5 billion) foreign debt and to re-establish warm relations with Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Next Tuesday the king is to visit Japan, Jordan's largest creditor, to reschedule its debt.