In the essays "Overstating the Arab State" (2001) by Nazih Ayubi, and "Is Jordan Palestine?" (2003) by Raphael Israeli, the authors deal with the psychologically-fragmented postcolonial identity, as determined by the effects (political and social, cultural and economic) of Western colonialism in the Middle East. As such, the fragmented national identity remains a characteristic of such societies, consequence of the imperially convenient, but arbitrary, colonial boundaries (geographic and cultural) demarcated by the Europeans, with which they ignored the tribal and clan relations that determined the geographic borders of the Middle East countries, before the arrival of European imperialists.Israeli, Raphael. 2003. "Is Jordan Palestine." Pp. 49–66 in Israel, Hashemites, and the Palestinians: The Fateful Triangle, edited by E. Karsh and P. R. Kumaraswamy. London: Frank Cass.Ayubi, Nazih. 2001. Overstating the Arab State. Bodmin: I.B. Tauris. pp. 86–123. Hence, the postcolonial literature about the Middle East examines and analyzes the Western discourses about identity formation, the existence and inconsistent nature of a postcolonial national-identity among the peoples of the contemporary Middle East.
