Dragon, Pegasus, and the Separation Wall: Controlled Palestinian Fantasy and the Limits of Political Imagination

This article examines the role of fantasy in contemporary Palestinian children’s and young adult literature and asks how fantastic elements operate in a reality shaped by occupation, imprisonment, separation walls, and ongoing violence. In contrast to studies that tend to see fantasy as a space for escape from reality, the article proposes the concept of “controlled fantasy”, a new interpretive framework for describing the modes of operation of the literary imagination under conditions of colonial oppression. This concept develops from a theoretical dialogue with the writings of Fredric Jameson and Rosemary Jackson, who see fantasy and speculative literature as critical mechanisms that reveal the limits of the present and the repressed political inherent in it. The article offers an interpretive reading of three works: Dragon of Bethlehem by Huda El Shuwa, Dum Dum Dum by Kawther Said and Manar Neirat, and The Oil’s Secret Tale by Walid Daqqa. Through an analysis of the dragon, the Pegasus, and the speaking olive tree, the study demonstrates that the fantastic elements do not mask the political reality nor do they offer a fully utopian alternative, but rather operate from an awareness of its limitations. Controlled fantasy allows for movement, hope, and emotional processing, but leaves intact the power structures within which it is created. The central argument is that Palestinian children’s and young adult literature does not activate the political imagination through a vision of total liberation, but rather through a fantasy that delineates the boundaries of the possible and undermines them from within. In doing so, it offers a unique aesthetic-political model of resistance, survival, and hope under conditions of ongoing restriction.