Viktoria Gulieva sat in a hot-pink armchair wearing a denim tube dress over her pregnant belly and her dark hair slicked back in a tight bun. Her white Pomeranian dog perched on her lap. A salon worker delicately painted pale pink polish onto her toenails, which were spread apart by heart-shaped foam separators.

“We do our nails because this is like emotional support for us,” said Ms. Gulieva, 30, herself a beautician. “We do something to feel better. Because of everything going on, because of the war, we are on an emotional edge. If we get our nails done, we can at least look at our hands, and say, ‘Those look good.’”

Paying attention to beauty may seem a trivial concern when the very fate of Ukraine is at stake, with Russia stepping up its bombardment of Ukraine’s cities and Moscow’s troops grinding forward on the eastern front. But for many women, it is an important ritual of daily life.

The act of keeping up appearances has also become a small way for Ukrainians to show Russia that this war has not broken them.

Even a simple act of pampering can be difficult to carry out. Power outages and air-raid sirens can make it difficult for women to have their nails done — yet many clearly make the effort. Cases in point: a surly bank teller with polished tan fingernails punctuated by glittery pale swirls, a friendly waitress with fingernails painted like blue crocodile skin, a government worker in a Kyiv suburb who once attended up to a dozen funerals a day and helped supervise the digging of mass graves but who still sports a perfect French manicure.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian women have adapted. They still wear long shiny dresses in Kyiv, the capital, but with practical shoes, often white tennies — making it easier to move quickly if an air raid siren goes off. They tie their hair into complicated updos when a lack of power means no hot water. A female Ukrainian soldier on the front lines posted her beauty ritual on Instagram: how she braids her long reddish-brown hair, how she does a gel manicure wearing camouflage.

The general manager of L’Oréal in Ukraine recently also described how beauty rituals boosted people’s morale, calling it the “red lipstick effect.” Even women who have taken jobs in the mines — because the men who once worked there are serving in the army — sometimes sport long red fingernails.

“Our women are unstoppable,” said Donna Todorova, manager at Kukla salon, where Ms. Gulieva had her nails painted.

Women in Ukraine have a reputation for beautiful nails, and the country’s nail professionals — called “nail masters” here — are coveted hires at salons throughout Europe. Their manicures are often not bland monochromatic nails: Every nail has long been seen as its own canvas, often detailed like a miniature painting.

But after Russia’s invasion, nails became something else. Many women decorated their nails with patriotic symbols, painted blue and yellow for the country’s flag, or with sunflowers, ubiquitous in Ukrainian fields, or red poppies, officially designated as a symbol of remembrance for the war’s dead. A salon called Mimi Miss in Kyiv still advertises on Instagram by saying, “Choose us — invest in the death of the enemies,” next to patriotic blue and yellow hearts.

Fingernails also became ways to identify the dead. A clinic employee killed by missile debris in Kyiv in July was recognized by her pink manicure with the white polka dots, the victim’s daughter said. A heating plant operator shot by Russian forces while riding her bike in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in March 2022 was identified by her manicure: four red nails and the fifth, painted white, with a small purple heart bordered in silver.

Back then, when Russian troops pushed toward Kyiv, they took over a beauty salon in Bucha called Profi, near a major intersection and some of the worst carnage. Snipers set up in the salon window on the second floor, shooting at cars and buses, recalled the owner, Iryna Davydovych, adding that her family had stayed in the basement of their nearby home before escaping to live nearby with her mother. The Ukrainian Army then pushed the Russian invaders out.

“The Russians left behind destruction and a lot of trash,” Ms. Davydovych, 54, recalled.

In April 2022, just in time for the Easter holiday, Ms. Davydovych and her husband finished cleaning up the salon, and electricity was restored. The business reopened. Ms. Davydovych’s husband then joined the army. He’s still on the front lines.

“Sometimes you sit down and cry,” she said. “But in the morning you get up, put on lipstick, go out looking beautiful and water the flowers.”

Fifteen people now work at Profi, including four nail masters. Tetiana Kravchenko, known as Tania, is so popular that she is booked up weeks in advance. On a recent Wednesday, she painted the nails of Natalia Fomenko in designs of fluorescent green and black.

“We follow Tania around,” said Ms. Fomenko, who also brings her husband to the salon. “If she ever goes to Kyiv, we’ll follow her to Kyiv.” If Ms. Kravchenko isn’t working, Ms. Fomenko added, “it’s a catastrophe.”

“I’m always here,” Ms. Kravchenko said, bent over her work.

Now, perhaps in a nod to the third year of the war and to people’s moods, the patriotic symbols on nails are rarer. The most popular styles in Ukraine are nudes, French manicures and the occasional bright pastel, nail masters said. Ms. Kravchenko said that more women were opting for practical manicures. “Natural — it’s the new trend,” she said, waving her hands, which were manicured but not painted.

Still, at Kukla, one 21-year-old nail master — who decided on her future profession when she was in the ninth grade — likes to show off her artistic creations, in which she glues delicate butterflies onto fingernails or even pierces them with hoops.

Every customer at Kukla had a war story.

Ms. Gulieva’s family once owned their own beauty salon, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. In March 2022, a rocket destroyed the salon, shattering the panoramic windows and ruining much of its equipment for hydro peeling and permanent makeup, Ms. Gulieva recalled. She fled to Germany, along with her mother, sister and brother. But a few months later, Ms. Gulieva returned, against her mother’s wishes, to be near her husband, who had joined the army on the front line. Her mother and sister now work in German salons.

Clients sometimes call Kukla to ask about potential cancellations because of power outages or missile strikes, but that rarely happens. On July 8, when missile strikes killed more than 42 people across Ukraine, mostly in the capital Kyiv, workers and salon employees took shelter in a nearby subway station.

“When the air raid was over, the customers returned and the nail technicians continued their work,” Ms. Todorova said. “As far as I remember, nobody canceled their appointments that day.”

Dzvinka Pinchuk and Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.

When the war forced Nasser al-Zaanin to flee his home in northern Gaza in October, he, along with his adult sons and grandchildren, moved to a school that had been turned into a shelter.

There, at the Abdul Kareem al-Aklouk school in the town of Deir al Balah, he helped set up a system of committees to improve life for families who had taken refuge. The committees oversaw food, water and medical needs, and they had one red line: No armed men were allowed in the compound.

Residents, already forced to evacuate their homes because of Israel’s intense bombardment, wanted to avoid becoming a target for Israeli forces hunting down Hamas militants. Every few days in recent weeks, Israel has hit a school building turned shelter where it has said militants are hiding, including on Saturday, when it struck two compounds in northern Gaza that it said Hamas was using as a military base.

Early in the conflict, Mr. Zaanin said, Hamas had wanted to station police officers at the shelter where he was staying. The group said it would ensure security, but he said the residents had gathered to stop that.

“All the families agreed,” said Mr. Zaanin, 56, who once worked as a civil servant for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

“We simply want to save all families, women and children and not let there be any potential threat against us because of the existence of police and members of the Hamas government,” he said. The police, Mr. al-Zaanin added, could stand outside the building but not inside.

Several other residents of school shelters in central Gaza recounted similar stories, though attitudes in other areas were unknown. It is hard to know how widespread the phenomenon is, and whether the armed militia are from Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other armed gangs, but these residents’ experiences suggest that at least some evacuees have blocked armed militias from moving into these shelters.

“We will quickly kick anyone who has a gun or a rifle out of this school,” said Saleh al-Kafarneh, 62, who lives at another government school in Deir al Balah and said he locked the gates at night. “We don’t allow anyone to ruin life here, or cause any strike against those civilians and families.” A third resident, Mohammed Shehda al-Obwaini, 57, said he would fight any armed men if he found them in a school shelter.

The residents’ testimonies also suggested that Hamas’s grip on the enclave may be weakened by the war and that ad hoc community groups are starting to operate outside the organization’s control, at least on a small scale.

The accounts, which cannot be independently confirmed, come as Israel has sharply increased the rate of its airstrikes on schools turned shelters to target what it calls Hamas command-and-control centers. It says militants have “cynically exploited” these sensitive sites to plan operations. Hamas, a militant group rather than a conventional army, has used both civilian structures and tunnels as defenses. It was not possible to confirm whether armed or unarmed militants stay in the school shelters.

“Strikes against this infrastructure are conducted in accordance with international law, with the purpose of preventing the restoration of terrorist organizations’ capabilities,” an Israeli military statement said last month. The military also says it acts using precise intelligence and takes steps to minimize civilian harm.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the attacks, according to local health officials. In one particularly deadly example on Aug. 10, the Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said that more than 90 people were killed in a strike on a school in northern Gaza. The toll could not be confirmed independently. Israel said that it had killed at least 31 Islamic Jihad and Hamas fighters and that the compound itself had not been severely damaged.

In Saturday,’s strikes, Gazan rescue services said the first had killed four people, and medics said the second had killed three and wounded 20 more.

The Israeli military has said that it has found weapons stored at schools or struck armed militants there. In some cases, the military has said that Hamas used schools as a “hiding place to direct and plan numerous attacks” against Israeli troops.

More recently, some of the military’s reports about the strikes have not mentioned weapons, and on Saturday, it did not say whether the militants targeted in the strike were armed.

The military, in recent weeks, has not explained in its statements how it arrived at its intelligence conclusions or given more details about whom it has targeted.

The United Nations, the European Union and several governments have sharply criticized Israel’s government over the strikes. Senior U.N. officials argue that to target schools — many of which are run by the United Nations — violates international law and that Israel has a duty to protect civilians caught in the war.

Formal education has been suspended in Gaza because of the war, and hundreds of schools have been turned into shelters. The shelters have played a vital role in Gaza, which has been shattered by more than 10 months of war. Almost all of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents have fled their homes, and some people say they have been forced to move as many as 10 times, often in response to Israeli warnings.

In addition, more than half of all residential buildings in the enclave have been damaged or destroyed, mainly by Israeli airstrikes, the World Bank said in January. At the same time, more than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools and all 12 of its universities have been severely damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.

Some people have stayed with relatives. Hundreds of thousands now live in makeshift tents. Others have decamped to overcrowded school compounds, with families living in classrooms, corridors and yards.

In the close-knit Gazan society, established families seem to have sway in the shelters.

“We are the oldest generation here,” Mr. Kafarneh said. As new people arrive, he said, “We ask about that person, their political views, just to be aware of who they are.”

“We don’t allow anyone to enter with their rifle, whether he is a militant or from a big tribe or family.”

Israel’s recent attacks on the schools have deepened the misery and sense of insecurity for civilians who live there, not least because the attacks often come without warning.

Mai Riyad al-Basyouni, 22, who lived at a government school in Deir al Balah with her husband and 3-month-old daughter, said that women and children were particularly at risk because they stayed indoors at the school, whereas men were often at the markets during the day.

She said she had been at the school for nine months and wanted to leave because of the airstrikes but could not afford to rent elsewhere. A particular worry was shrapnel, which she said she feared could pierce her tent with ease.

“Hearing the news of targeting more schools makes my daily life more miserable, stressful and traumatic,” she said.

Mohammed Shehda al-Obwaini, 57, said he used to live in a school shelter west of Deir al Balah but left after it was hit a few weeks ago and has now pitched a tent for himself and his family near a soccer field.

He described the attack on the school where he had stayed as terrifying.

“Is Israel fighting the Palestinians or Hamas?” he said. “We have had enough suffering and killing. We have enough death among us.”

A man who confessed to drugging his wife for years and bringing dozens of men into their home to join him in raping her was taken to the hospital on Tuesday just hours before he was due to testify in his trial, his lawyer said.

The condition of the man, Dominique Pelicot, 71, whose trial in Avignon, France, has shocked the country and packed two courtrooms with reporters from around the world, was not immediately clear.

His lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, told reporters in the courthouse that Mr. Pelicot had been suffering from abdominal pain and discomfort in urinating since Friday, for which he had been excused from court on Monday.

On Tuesday, the head judge, Roger Arata, ordered Mr. Pelicot to undergo a medical examination and said that if he was admitted to the hospital, the trial would be suspended until his condition improved. Later in the afternoon, the judge announced that Mr. Pelicot’s health status did not preclude him from coming in person to the hearings, and he would return to court on Wednesday. Mr. Pelicot’s testimony, he added, would be squeezed into the schedule “in intervals” over the coming days.

Ms. Zavarro said Mr. Pelicot, who had asked to testify, still planned to take the stand before his wife and three children, who have been in the courtroom since the trial began last week and have not communicated with him since his arrest in late 2020.

“I heard things this morning in the courtroom suggesting that obviously his absence would be on purpose: No way,” Ms. Zavarro said. “Let us be very clear, Mr. Pelicot has not shied away, Mr. Pelicot will not shirk, Mr. Pelicot will be there, he will answer all the questions. But there is this medical problem for which he did not plan.”

Testifying, she added, was “for him, essential.”

Mr. Pelicot has pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him. His lawyer has said that he hopes to use the trial to explain himself to Gisèle Pelicot, who was his wife for 50 years, and to his children.

The fight between the United States and the world’s antidoping regulator over the handling of positive tests by elite Chinese swimmers has escalated in recent weeks and drawn in a powerful new player: the Biden White House.

The regulator, the World Anti-Doping Agency, known as WADA, informed the White House last month that its officials were seeking to bar the administration’s representative from any deliberations about positive tests by Chinese athletes at the agency’s leadership meeting this week in Turkey.

The attempt to exclude the official, Dr. Rahul Gupta, who is the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, is seen as part of a larger effort by WADA to push back on American criticism of the agency’s handling of the doping allegations and to try to shut down an F.B.I. investigation into the matter.

WADA’s critics say the agency’s push to have Dr. Gupta barred from the discussions is meant to undercut the United States’ ability to voice concerns over how the Chinese tests were handled before the past two Summer Olympics, and to hamstring calls for more transparency and accountability in the global antidoping system.

The White House has responded forcefully, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with government and antidoping officials. The heated back and forth is expected to come to a head on Thursday at the meeting in Turkey.

“Any attempt to impose preliminary measures will be met with strong opposition and appropriate action(s) from the United States government,” a top White House lawyer wrote to WADA in a previously undisclosed nine-page letter sent late last month and reviewed by The Times.

The disclosure about Dr. Gupta comes as WADA has continued to pressure the United States in other ways.

The antidoping agency has refused to hand over documents in response to requests from Congressional committees conducting investigations. In July, the International Olympic Committee, WADA’s biggest backer, essentially conditioned the awarding of the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City on pledges by local officials to help curtail inquiries by the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and Congress.

According to WADA’s communications to its executive board, WADA sued the United States Anti-Doping Agency, its most vocal critic, in August in Switzerland, citing what it called “sustained defamatory comments.”

All the while, WADA has kept up a drumbeat of criticism over how the United States handles doping cases, repeatedly pointing out that most American professional sports operate beyond the reach of the global antidoping system. Internally, WADA has been conducting a leak investigation to determine who disclosed documents to The Times, which in April published an investigation that revealed how the agency handled positive tests involving about two dozen Chinese swimmers.

Dr. Gupta, the White House’s top drug official, is a member of WADA’s board, where he represents not only the United States but more than 40 countries in the Americas. Only the International Olympic Committee contributes more than the United States to WADA’s $40 million annual budget.

His potential exclusion from this week’s executive committee session in Turkey was discussed at a meeting last week among public authorities who represent five regions around the world on WADA’s board, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the conversations but who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. At that meeting, representatives from the other regions agreed to speak out against Dr. Gupta’s exclusion on Thursday.

The efforts to remove Dr. Gupta, who was celebrated by WADA at a ceremony as recently as March, have been taking place for a number of weeks and have led to a furious response from the White House.

The White House claimed in its letter to WADA that the agency’s top leaders had orchestrated the attempt to sideline Dr. Gupta through an anonymous conflict-of-interest complaint that accused him of attending meetings without disclosing his knowledge of a criminal investigation into the Chinese case.

In response to questions from The Times, a spokesman for WADA, James Fitzgerald, said that it was inaccurate to say that the agency planned to bar Dr. Gupta or to say that its top officials, its president Witold Banka and its longtime general secretary, Olivier Niggli, had concluded that the doctor had a conflict of interest.

At Thursday’s meeting, members of WADA’s executive committee will be provided with a copy of a final report into its handling of the Chinese doping cases, written by an independent prosecutor hired by the agency. The prosecutor’s interim conclusions, published before this summer’s Paris Olympics, absolved the agency of any wrongdoing.

Uneasiness between WADA, Olympic officials and the United States predates the current crisis and stems from the passing of legislation in 2020 that allows U.S. law enforcement to pursue doping cases around the world. It is those powers that most worry global antidoping officials, who have expressed growing concern about the risk of tit-for-tat laws being passed in other countries.

In June, the head of swimming’s governing body was approached by federal investigators while attending U.S. Olympic trials and subpoenaed to provide information related to the China case. The incident has made some international sports officials skittish about traveling to the United States, for fear of being drawn in to criminal cases.

Nine weeks into his new job as Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer suffered his first big parliamentary rebellion on Tuesday, in a vote that exposed unease about his center-left government’s austere tone and focus on belt-tightening.

Although the government ultimately prevailed, more than 50 of Labour’s 404 lawmakers did not support its move to restrict payments that help retirees with winter heating costs.

Under the initiative, an annual payment of at least £200 ($261) that is currently available to anyone over the age of 66 will be subject to a means test, available only to those with the lowest incomes.

Fifty-three Labour members either abstained or were absent, and one voted against the plan.

Mr. Starmer has a majority of more than 160 lawmakers, and the plan’s passage — and therefore his victory — was never in doubt. But the number of Labour members who did not support it underscored wider disquiet over a policy that surprised many when it was announced.

“It came out of the blue and it just dropped,” said John McTernan, a political strategist who was an aide to Tony Blair when he was prime minister. The new curb could have been justified on the grounds of fairness, since many wealthy pensioners do not need the payments, Mr. McTernan said. But instead, the government focused its explanation on the need to cut spending.

By failing to sell the policy effectively to the public or his party, Mr. McTernan said, Mr. Starmer turned it into an awkward early test of his authority.“I think it was mishandled and it’s a lesson, the lesson being: Don’t make a political decision that is not backed by a political narrative and a political argument,” he added.

Labour swept to power for the first time in 14 years with a landslide victory in July’s election, and a triumphant Mr. Starmer promised that “the work of change begins immediately.”

But last month the prime minister warned that “things will get worse before they get better,” blaming a disastrous economic inheritance from the previous Conservative government and the dire state of Britain’s public services.

Some critics accuse him of substituting the tone of hope on which he campaigned with one of undiluted miserabilism.

With the taxpayer-funded National Health Service and other public services badly frayed, the mood could worsen next month when the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announces her budget plans.

After coming to power, Ms. Reeves says she discovered a £22 billion ($28.77 billion) “black hole” in the government finances, prompting the move to curb winter fuel aid.

Around 11.4 million retired people currently qualify for the payments. Under the new plan, eligibility will be limited to 1.5 million people who receive other welfare support.

However, there is concern for people entitled to those benefits who fail to claim them, and critics warn of hardship for retirees whose incomes are just above the threshold. Mick Lynch, who leads the R.M.T. rail workers’ union, likened the government to the Grinch.

The opposition Conservative Party disputes claims of a £22 billion “black hole,” and argues that Ms. Reeves’s choices reflect her priorities.

While cutting the winter fuel payments, saving £1.4 billion ($1.83 billion), Ms. Reeves has also given pay raises larger than the rate of inflation to public sector workers. Labour says those pay deals were necessary to incentivize those workers, who saw their real wages fall over the past five years while the average pay of private sector workers rose.

Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Mr. Starmer told a trade union conference that he made “no apology for the decisions we’ve had to take to change the country,” adding that he would not risk his government’s commitment to economic stability or dodge difficult decisions. “I owe you that candor,” he said.

Winter fuel payments were introduced under Mr. Blair after his election victory in 1997. When Theresa May, a Conservative former prime minister, considered curbing the payments in 2017, Labour said the plan could put thousands of lives at risk, and she retreated.

But Mr. Starmer’s supporters point out that for years Britain’s retirees have received generous financial protection under a policy known as the “triple lock,” which increases pensions annually by whichever figure is highest: 2.5 percent, the rate of inflation or earnings growth.

Labour has kept that policy and Ms. Reeves said that the basic state pension had risen by around £900 ($1,177) compared with a year ago — much more than the maximum £300 fuel payment in question.

“The winter fuel allowance came from a different time,” said Mr. McTernan, the political strategist. “We have now had 14 years of the Tories delivering a triple lock which has substantially raised the rate of the basic state pension.” Still, he argued, Mr. Starmer should have sugar coated the fuel benefit means test pill by explaining how sacrifices now would produce long-term benefits.

“If it’s going to get worse before it gets better — fine. I get the worse bit,” he said. “But what does the better bit look like or feel like? It goes back to the basics — you do need to tell a story about your politics.”

Voters went to the polls for a parliamentary election in the Arab kingdom of Jordan on Tuesday, with domestic concerns such as unemployment high on their agenda, although an Islamist party has tried to ride a wave of popular anger about Israel’s war in Gaza to challenge the pro-Western government.

The election was held under a new system introduced in 2022 that aims to promote democratization and increase the role of political parties, while reducing the influence of tribes on national politics.

Under the system, candidates for the 138 seats of the lower house may now run under national parties, rather than as individuals. (Parliament’s upper house as well as key government posts are selected by King Abdullah II.) The polls closed at 7 p.m. local time and the state news agency put turnout at around 31 percent. The results are expected overnight or early on Wednesday.

The political arm of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which had boycotted previous elections, used that opportunity to try to win votes, campaigning on a platform of opposition to the Gaza war, and support for an end to cooperation between Jordan and Israel on security and for establishment of a Palestinian state. Many Jordanian citizens are of Palestinian origin, and the country contains the largest proportion of Palestinian exiles anywhere.

“Gaza has given the Muslim Brotherhood an opportunity to amplify their election campaign and slogans,” said Amer Al Sabaileh, a regional security expert and university professor based in Jordan’s capital, Amman. “They exploit the concept of resistance and the entire war on Gaza to their advantage, even promoting the idea that not voting for them equates to normalization with Israel.”

But Mr. Sabaileh said that the results would likely nevertheless yield victory for tribal and pro-government parties because they are deeply entrenched in the political system and because turnout is typically higher in rural areas, their traditional base.

Jordan’s parliament has little direct power over foreign policy, which is controlled by the king under the country’s constitution. As a result many voters, even if they hold strong views about Gaza and the West Bank, would be unlikely to see their vote as a way to effect change in that area, according to Mr. Sabaileh.

Unemployment, poverty and corruption are among the top domestic concerns of voters in the country of around 11 million people, according to many Jordanians and an opinion poll published earlier this year. The unemployment rate stands at 21 percent, government figures show, but youth unemployment is far higher.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas led the deadly attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza, there have been several mass pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The Jordanian government has denounced Israel’s conduct of the conflict and has reaffirmed its position that any transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank is a declaration of war. The country, however, is an important regional ally of the United States and cooperates closely with Israel.

Jordanian government officials have sought to limit expressions of opposition to Israel over the conflict, and Amnesty International reported in April that since October, at least 1,500 people, including many activists, have been arrested on charges of protesting against the war.

Jordan was also one of several countries including the United States that helped shoot down a barrage of missiles and drones that Iran fired at Israel in April. The government described its military action as that of self-defense, rather than something done directly to benefit Israel.

The state has presented the election as a chance to bolster development and democratic reform in Jordan by enhancing the role of political parties, something that appeals to the United States and other allies, Mr. Sabaileh said, adding that it is being framed “as a way to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Turnout in previous parliamentary elections has been relatively low, particularly in Amman and other cities, and some voters said on Tuesday they had wrestled with the question of whether to participate and whether the Parliament would be sufficiently empowered to make a difference in their lives.

Ameen Halaseh, a retired civil engineer, 61, said that he and his wife had voted early in the morning in Amman, motivated by the chance to help establish a system that could, in time, lead to powerful political parties that could play a real role in shaping government policy.

“Most Jordanians love the king and the Hashemite family, but the legislature should be elected by the people to express what people want,” Mr. Halaseh said. “The new law that the government and the Parliament issued is really trying to plant a seed for generations to come to have real elections.”

By contrast, Shahd Fawzi, 30, a medical doctor who works in the capital, said that she did not vote because she lacked confidence that the candidates and parties who were running could institute material change. Among the changes she wanted were greater freedom of expression and more women in politics. But in the short term, she said, “I don’t see there’s any benefits from voting.”