Amid the weekly diet of Middle East failures and death tolls, a sudden upset has emerged from one of its less conflicted corners. Jordan has just seen a major popular mobilization in the wake of a government-proposed income tax law that would increase burdens on wage earners and business alike. Not only did this mobilization force the proposal’s withdrawal, but it also removed the prime minister who stubbornly wanted to impose it along with other cuts in subsidies.

For a brief moment, a previously unseen cross-class coalition emerged and successfully reversed policy, at least temporarily. But despite the hopes of an Arab Spring redux, the political blockages that led to its failure in Jordan the first time around in 2011 and 2012 haven’t gone anywhere. The Jordanian working class is still defeated and fractured. The middle class that just reaped this victory is better off searching for allies below.