When Arpan Roy invited me to write a commentary for the “Staying-With Palestine” feature, I did not know where to begin. Should I start from where I am “staying” today, in al-Khalil (Hebron), helplessly witnessing the ongoing genocide in Gaza, only 50 kilometers away, while anticipating the elimination of what remains of a dismembered Palestine? The ongoing fragmentation of the West Bank, once depicted as an archipelago of fragmented islands by the French artist Julien Bousac in 2009, turned Palestinian towns and villages into isolated military zones scattered by around 1000 checkpoints (including earth mounds and roadblocks) and iron gates blocking the main entrances. We hear the bombs falling on Gaza, watch the horrific live-streamed death and destruction of all forms of life, and do nothing to stop the genocide in Gaza or “the earthquake” in the West Bank (Nabulsi 2024). In their ongoing attempts to expand their colonial settlements in what remains of Palestine, the Israeli state army and settler gangs, almost daily raid Palestinian localities with their armored vehicles.

Seemingly endless Israeli attacks and military invasion are expanding beyond Palestine, in Lebanon and Syria, with impunity, while acts of support or solidarity are suppressed in neighboring Arab states. The exception to this is Yemen’s Ansar Allah, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and a few Iraqi resistance factions. The Arab support for Gaza today has been reduced to small popular stands in solidarity, which are hardly visible when compared to the larger solidarity protests and encampments by demonstrators outside the Arab world. Worst of all the leaders of several Arab states make deals and trade worth tens of billions of dollars with the Israeli colonial state, even when the free people of the world are demonstrating to push their governments and companies to boycott Israel politically and economically.

The contributors to this forum explored various dilemmas that partially address one of the questions raised in the introduction: “A hundred years of the Palestinian cause, and the support that it has received from various actors from various stages, has not resulted in the liberation of Palestine.” During these times of despair, it is important to remember the times when Palestinians had a larger space to dream of liberation and justice in Palestine and neighboring postcolonial states. I argue that fragmentation as a colonial tool to rule and divide the colonized communities in the Palestinian and Arab cases reduced several possibilities of local solidarities and support that have been essential in creating the conditions for sustaining the Palestinian collective dream of liberation. The ability to dream of liberation and decolonization require “the creation of new men,” as described by Franz Fanon (2001: 28). A process that demands solidarity to create the conditions necessary for defying colonial plans of fragmentation and generating collective political consciousness among the colonized. The “new men” involved in the decolonization process, as Fanon told us, must not reproduce the colonizer’s world. They should build the conditions which will create new possibilities that require an act of collective dreaming and “revolutionary action” (Fanon 2001: 140).

To explain the decline of the Arab nationalist support to the collective dream of liberating Palestine (Muslih 1987), I will refer to the Iraqi example of fragmentation. The importance of the Iraqi case stems from its experience with fragmentation following a long period of violent wars and economic embargo, that seems to be replicated today in the Syrian and Palestinian cases. During the first three decades after the Nakba, the question of Palestine was articulated as an Arab question, especially among the Arab nationalist movement and the Baath party (Sayigh 1997, Charif 2021). The Baathist Iraq (1960s-1980s), like Assad’s Syria, and unlike Sadat’s Egypt, provided various levels of support to the Palestinian collective liberation dream, at least when it came to their Arab nationalist politics against normalization with Israel, in addition to hosting displaced Palestinians who maintained their refugee status, while enjoying substantial rights, and various Palestinian political factions whose leftist (and later Islamic) rhetoric emphasized resistance, liberation, and return. This was more evident in Syria, where Palestinian factions were more active than in Iraq, with fluctuating relationships with the various ruling regimes (Gabiam 2016, Al-Hardan 2016). For example, al-Yarmouk refugee camp was often called by the Palestinians the “political capital” of the refugees’ struggle for self-determination and the right of return, where leftist factions were active with their numerous grassroots social and political organizations. Following the collapse of the USSR and the Socialist bloc, the Islamic factions became more visible, especially after the Oslo Accords of 1993 allowed for a limited form of self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for abandoning full liberation and the right of return.

Rather than contributing to the establishment of the conditions that will help create “the new men” who should lead the decolonization process in postcolonial Arab states, the colonial interventions, of which Oslo Accords were a major strategic component, promoted the birth of a so-called “New Middle East” by creating “new” fragmented political periphery states in an ancient world such as the new Iraq, or new Syria to be dominated by the then recently established Israeli state as part of the Zionist expansive settler-colonial project. In 2003, George W. Bush introduced his vision of the “new Iraq”—an Iraq liberated from Saddam Hussein’s despotic regime. The plan started earlier, after the US-led bombing of the state infrastructure in 1991 and during the thirteen years of economic embargo and sanctions to force Iraq to disarm, paving the road for invading and occupying a formerly sovereign state by the US and its allies (Gordon 2010, Khoury 2013, Dewachi 2017). The new Iraq in the official statements of Bush and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was presented as an oasis of democracy and free market economy. As in the case of Palestine, fragmentation was one of the main tools used in the new Iraq; it was introduced by privatizing the post invasion Iraqi economy and selling off its industries, which eventually led to the expulsion of several Iraqi bureaucrats and professionals from their jobs in the public sector. Many of the private contractors’ projects were funded by the USAID and once the money was disbursed, it ended up in the hands of private companies, most of which were American. The ultimate aim was to create a newIraq based on a neoliberal model.

In his reading of the disorder that erupted in Iraq, anthropologist Marshal Sahlins criticized the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the essentialism informing the invaders’ conquer-and divide policies—which ignored a long history of coexistence: “It takes a lot of culture to make a state of nature” (Sahlins 2011). Within two years of invasion, the United States had created a novel sectarian system, what is described in the media as the “Lebanonization of Iraq”: the parliament was eventually established in 2005 and ministries were allocated according to the relative weight of such parties and of parliamentary blocs, and the reconstructed armed forces followed this pattern. Previously, of little significance, sectarian parties and networks started to exert a much stronger influence in the absence of a strong central state (Marfleet 2007).

The walling of Baghdad was another step in dividing the city into small manageable pieces with walls and military checkpoints, which further intensified militia attacks on sectarian pretext and forced many inhabitants to relocate. Like Palestine, walling also increased the daily suffering of Iraqis who had to waste long hours to reach their places of work or study or medical treatment. The sectarian wall, as it was often called, was a physical embodiment of the destruction of the social Baghdadi inter-communal life. It split neighbors and families and further reduced the already limited possibilities of living for the majority, who did not feel safe leaving their homes and could no longer reach their work and schools. It created the

conditions for anomie, the Durkheimian concept that refers to a situation in which former norms of solidarity break down due to a rapid change in society. Iraqis were forced to search for new ways to bring a sense of connectedness and solidarity in their lives.

However, it would be naïve to blame the fragmentation and rise of religious and sectarian divisions in the Iraqi society solely on the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The politicization of ethnic, tribal, and religious differences was practiced by the Iraqi state at various levels during times of wars and sanctions (Zubaida 2011). Other factors were involved in the rise of sectarian views or intolerance in previous Iraqi historical periods at various levels during the British colonial rule through sectarian division (Batatu 1978, Tripp 2007). After 2003, being Iraqi was not enough to continue living in Iraq, one had to be sectarian (See Eldridge’s contribution to this feature). In the current Iraq, solidarity is reduced to family origin, which became more important to gain access to political and administration positions than qualifications and skills (al-Mohammad 2012, 2015). The Iraqi and other experiences (Friedman 2008) show that when a social system produced its strong socio-economic productive basis, these religion/sectarian differences move to the background and lose their political roles. However, whenever the collective social system was attacked, whether by former state oppressive policies or foreign military interventions, these differences were politicized and were assumed as a social system for their followers (Adwan 2020).

Two decades later, in late-2024, the international community celebrated the creation of a “new Syria” after the fall of the Assad’s despotic rule. Yet, in Syria today (as in Iraq), one’s presence or absence is determined by one’s sect, ethnicity, and their former relationship to the fallen regime. This new situation in the region at large, imposed new representations on the inhabitants of those states, including the former Palestinian refugee communities who became almost invisible in those places where they used to live on equal terms with local Iraqi and Syrian citizens for seven decades. In the process of “liberation” from their former regimes, both Iraq and Syria have dismantled their armies and handed their weapons, a condition that obviously serves the Zionist expansionist dream of “Greater Israel” between the Euphrates and the Nile.

One major effect of the regional and Palestinian fragmentation is related to the Palestinian refugees who no longer represent a collective presence in Iraq and Syria, while we witness the ongoing annihilation of refugee communities in an increasingly fragmented Palestinian reality (Nabulsi 2024). Since January 2025, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees have been forcibly displaced from their homes in several West Bank refugee camps—Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem—where they lived for 77 years after the Nakba. Decades of international aid failed to address the Palestinian refugee suffering and ongoing Nakba that has often been reduced to a “humanitarian problem” (Feldman 2009), which culminated in the killings of the starved refugees in Gaza in a particularly cynical version of aid orchestrated by the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (Jadaliyya, 2025).

In the last paragraph of his conclusion chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon explicitly turns to the importance of imagining new possibilities: “For ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man” (2001, 255). Fanon’s call is a demand that the colonized peoples should imagine new ways to achieve freedom and justice. For decades, Palestinians have sought to amplify their call for freedom and justice through solidarity from the global Left and the global South, a legacy critically examined by contributors to this forum in response to Roy’s question: “What does it mean to stand with Palestine?” A central issue that follows is: to what extent has such solidarity been oriented not only toward Palestine as a humanitarian issue but also toward seriously confronting the Zionist settler-colonial project, and why has this solidarity failed to produce the conditions necessary for liberation? The critical dimension, in my view, lies in the decline of Arab state support. Neighboring Egypt, for instance, has consistently sought to restrict material and political assistance to Gaza. Iraq and Syria positioned themselves, historically, as champions of the Palestinian cause, granting Palestinians rights and protection that exceeded those available in most Arab host countries from 1948 to the 2000s. Yet today, Palestinian communities in Iraq and Syria have nearly disappeared.

In this commentary, I have tried to show the effects of fragmentation on the Iraqi society in an attempt to explain my main argument that fragmentation played a decisive role in weakening the Iraqi and Syrian standing-with Palestine. To stand with Palestine today means resisting not only the further fragmentation of Palestine itself but also of the region at large. Defragmentation must be seen as a vital step toward decolonization. Standing with (as much as staying-with) Palestine also means learning from past solidarities: from the martyrs who returned to their families thanks to resistance, and from the legacy of anti-colonial fighters both near and far.

I will end here with a note “on hope” recalled from a longer interview with a Palestinian refugee I met in al-Yarmouk camp in Syria in summer 2008 about the martyr-refugees; a new concept she used to describe the 199 Arab and Palestinian freedom fighters who returned to their families as part of al-Radwan prisoner exchange operation between Hezbollah and Israel:

“Palestine has always been our dream. When the revolution began, we had a clear goal. Our goal was the liberation of Palestine, and if we remained steadfast as Arabs and Palestinians, we could have achieved it […]. Thanks to the resistance, hope returned to us, when the martyrs returned. After all those long years and decades, the martyrs returned to their people and families. This proves that everything we fight for will return to us.”

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Laura Adwan is an Assistant Professor at Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Science. Her work focuses on forced displacement and transformations among refugees, rural and Bedouin communities in occupied Palestine and the region, by exploring the ways communities view their lived experiences, situated in a historical political economy.

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References

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Cite as: Adwan, Laura 2025. “Commentary: On fragmentation and decolonization. The demise of a collective liberation dream” Focaalblog October 6. https://www.focaalblog.com/2025/10/06/laura-adwan-commentary-on-fragmentation-and-decolonization-the-demise-of-a-collective-liberation-dream/