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“Palestinian refugee camps are seen as gold mines for votes. There are tens of thousands of votes up for grab,” said Khatib, as he sifted through a list of telephone contacts. “There are middlemen in various camps who can bring me votes whenever I need them. Some of them do not even buy the votes, but herd relatives to me – most of whom are women who are poor and uneducated,” he told The Media Line.

Jordan is scheduled to hold elections for parliament on January 23, under an amended law. The revised legislation empowers tribes loyal to the royal family and affords only minimal representation to Jordanians of Palestinian origin who have full Jordanian citizenship.

In the squalid Baqaa refugee camp, home to nearly 300,000 refugees, residents show little interest in reform protests that swept through the main cities across Jordan. Residents of refugee camps opted to maintain a low profile ever since the “Arab Spring” reached Jordan, as leaders of the Palestinian community worry their camps are not politically protected.

“We have no role in this political drama. We worry about a tough response by the security forces if we take to the streets to demand reforms,” said Helmi Samer, a camp activist who has been lobbying for an elections boycott.

“We are considered Jordanians only on election day. For rest of the year, we are treated like [the] Palestinian refugees [we are] who have no political rights,” he says, noting that Palestinian camps housing nearly one million residents are represented by only four seats in the parliament, while a small town like Ma’an, with a population of merely 50,000 people, has five representatives in the 122-seat parliament.