The Arabs in Israel—Hybrid Identity of a Stateless National Collectivity

abstract:The debate concerning the identity of Arabs in Israel involves a dimension that has not yet been studied—the hybrid identity of a stateless minority. The definition of Israel as a Jewish state, the fact that Arabs in Israel do not take part in the country’s Independence Day, and the emergence of a national movement among Arabs in Israel demanding cultural but not territorial autonomy are major factors that foreground this status of Arabs in Israel. The current study focuses on the influence of activist Arab groups—political, literary, and journalistic—within the Israeli Communist Party. The party operated as a group of “populist intellectuals” immediately following its consent to the Palestine Partition Plan. The goal of the Communist Party was to engineer the identity of the Palestinian collectivity in Israel as a hybrid identity adapted to the political and territorial circumstances in the aftermath of the War of 1948.