From New Lines Magazine.
A recently foiled Muslim Brotherhood plot symbolizes the challenge of growing popular discontent over the war in Gaza, in the Hashemite kingdom and across the region
On April 15, Jordanian authorities announced the arrest of 16 individuals linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, accused of preparing rocket and drone attacks from within the country. The state’s narrative was assertive and unmistakable: This was not an external operation misdirected inward, nor an ideological protest gone too far. It was a domestic threat. According to official reports, the operatives were trained in Lebanon — a country with which Jordan shares no direct border — and stashed explosives in Amman and Zarqa. Authorities and sources close to the intelligence community noted that planned meetings had taken place with figures in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
The Brotherhood’s response, however, went in a very different direction. Despite the fact that these preparations started well before Oct. 7, 2023, it attempted to reframe the plot as part of the broader “resistance axis,” painting it as an extension of the region’s moral confrontation with Israel — not an act of subversion against Jordan. In this telling, the operatives were not saboteurs but committed activists. No details about the intended targets or timing have been publicly disclosed, leaving the narrative open to competing political framings, with accusations concerning internal security on the one hand and defenses that point to external targets on the other. That distinction is more than rhetorical. It speaks to a deeper and increasingly contested question: Who gets to define resistance in today’s Middle East?
After 18 months of unrelenting war in Gaza, the boundaries between sanctioned struggle and unsanctioned action have grown increasingly blurred. Nonstate actors, who perceive regional governments as persisting in a policy of inaction, are increasingly asserting themselves as the rightful interpreters — and executors — of defiance.
In this climate and context, resistance has evolved from a political strategy into a moral currency — a means of extracting legitimacy. The war in Gaza has become both a regional and global litmus test of moral credibility. Jihad — long invoked in the context of Palestine as a response to the perceived failure of Arab states to act — is now being rebranded by Islamist movements and ideologues as legitimate resistance, rooted in sacred values. While this framing is not new, what distinguishes the current moment is the scale and brutality of the war in Gaza. That intensity has amplified the emotional and moral force of jihad as a concept, pushing it further into the mainstream of resistance discourse — not as extremism, but as obligation.
These values, seen as absolute and nonnegotiable, are invoked to justify and even sanctify extrastate action. For many — especially younger generations disillusioned with conventional politics — legitimacy now flows from moral clarity rather than institutional recognition.
The longer the war continues, the more power and legitimacy splinter. States are no longer judged solely by what they control, but by what they are seen to stand for. Movements like the Muslim Brotherhood have exploited this fragmentation — not only through confrontation, but through symbolism. Frustration becomes a mobilizing force, silence is cast as betrayal and the definition of justifiable defiance grows ever broader. “Moral imagination” begins to replace political realism.
Mohanned Al-Arabiat is a political analyst and writer based in Jordan.