TULKAREM (AFP) — "Books, Stationery, Sports Goods, Games and Gifts" reads the sign above Kahled Yassin's bookshop near the governor's office in the West Bank market town of Tulkarem.
It is an unlikely setting as the workplace for the uncle of a future queen.
Yassin, the bookshop's owner, is the paternal uncle of Her Royal Highness Princess Rania, the wife of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Abdullah, the Regent.
Before she was married, the likely future queen of Jordan was called Rania Yassin and the Yassins are a Tulkarem family.
"She was just a normal little girl when she came here. She played basketball or chess with my children. But we didn't know she was going to be a princess then," Yassin told AFP on Tuesday. "We're very proud of her and pleased that one day she will be queen of Jordan," the 67-year-old former teacher said as he tried to cope with a rush of schoolchildren crowding his shop after the Eid Al Fitr holidays.
The Yassins are well-known in Tulkarem. As part of the larger Al Seif clan, the family has a long history of opposing invaders and one of its scions, Abdul Rahman Haj Mohammad Yassin, led the Palestinian uprising against the British mandate in the Tulkarem area in 1936.
Like many Palestinians, Princess Rania's father and Khaled's brother, Faisal Yassin, left the West Bank to seek his fortune in Kuwait, where Princess Rania was born.
She was educated in Kuwait and at the American University in Cairo.
When the Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait after the Gulf War, her family left and went to Jordan.
"There are only four or five men from the family left in the town," said a cousin of Princess Rania's father, Ghazi Shafiq Yassin, 63, who works in the engineering department of Tulkarem municipality.
"But the people of Tulkarem and her family are very proud of Rania. We applaud her good fortune and for bringing together families, Arabs and Muslims together," he said.
Princess Rania's aunt Fadwa Yassin also glowed with pride.
"She is very intelligent, from the beginning, she was distinguished," she said during an interview with the Jerusalem Post. "As far as I am concerned, she could be queen of the world, not just Jordan."
Jordanian analysts believe that Princess Rania could be a major asset in Crown Prince Abdullah's relations with Jordanians of Palestinian origin, the Post said.
When Prince Abdullah ascends the Throne, his wife would not be the first queen of Palestinian origin. Alia Toukan, the third wife of King Hussein, traced her roots to a family from Nablus. She died in a helicopter crash while returning to Amman on February 9, 1977, from a trip to southern Jordan.