Who Is the Arab? Identity, Memory and Political Representation
The young people who are taking over social media today are no longer the same generation that stood at the center of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. In just a few years, their concerns have evolved. Political demands have increasingly given way to economic aspirations, particularly the search for opportunities, employment and the development of small businesses.
Yet beneath this transformation remains a fundamental question: Who is the Arab?
During a meeting with Dr. Abdelraouf Rawabdeh, Jordan's former prime minister and a major political figure, the question of Arab identity once again came to the center of the discussion. It also resonates among students in Beersheba, who confront questions of belonging and their place in society on a daily basis.
Identity does not disappear as societies modernize. It changes, is negotiated and, at times, defended.
In his Encyclopedia of Arab Myths of the Pre-Islamic Period and Their Meanings, Mohamed Ajina describes a world inhabited by invisible creatures, ghouls, Tabi'a and Nasnas. He depicts the fear of an aging sheikh who worries that the desert might treacherously swallow him through the figure of the "ogre."
This horror extends beyond death. It reaches beyond what might be described as "geographical erasure": the fear of disappearing without leaving behind a grave where one's children can return to remember and mourn.
These stories are not merely tales of the supernatural. They also reflect a society confronted with fear, uncertainty and disappearance.
The figure of Umm al-Sibyan, in particular, embodies an ancient fear of forces threatening children, family and the continuity of the group. This fear of disappearance can also be read, in a different context, through contemporary relationships with violence and identity.
Historian Robert Hoyland has demonstrated the importance of rock inscriptions in understanding the earliest Arab societies. Such inscriptions provided a means of leaving a trace, making one's presence visible and preserving it over time.
Today, violence can sometimes function as another, far more brutal form of "inscription."
Gunfire, weapons and noise can become ways of signaling presence. When an individual or group believes that its voice is not being heard by institutions, violence can become a language.
This echoes Professor Khaldoun Al-Naqeeb's analysis of the conflict between tribal fanaticism and the modern state. When state security forces retreat, tribal affiliation can become the only available mechanism of protection, while retaliatory violence becomes an "alternative law" for restoring a lost balance of power.
In this interpretation, society does not act simply out of ignorance. It follows a logic of survival. Violence becomes a tool for producing temporary individual security in the absence of durable institutional security.
Building more structures, strengthening security or multiplying institutional mechanisms can address symptoms without answering the deeper question: What does it mean to be recognized?
That question acquires particular significance in the context of political decisions concerning Arab representation in Israel.
On September 23, Israel's Central Elections Committee voted on the disqualification of Arab parties as well as several individual candidacies, including those of Sami Abu Shehadeh and Ofer Cassif. The decisions are subject to review by the Supreme Court.
Beyond the legal procedures themselves, these developments contribute, among some members of the Arab population, to a perception of renewed political erasure.
Yet the response to such a sense of erasure cannot simply be withdrawal.
Political participation remains one of the principal means of transforming demographic presence into meaningful representation. Voting, participating in public life, building businesses, creating institutions and defending one's identity are all ways of leaving a trace.
The question, therefore, may not be whether victimhood is the answer, but how to move beyond a dynamic in which identity is constructed primarily through opposition, fear or violence.
For younger generations in particular, the challenge is not necessarily to choose between identity and modernization. It is to determine how identity can remain meaningful while becoming compatible with economic opportunity, civic participation and institutional belonging.
The Arab identity does not disappear when society changes. It evolves.
The more important question is whether that evolution can take place through participation rather than confrontation, and through recognition rather than erasure.
Kaid Abulatif
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