Arab Society in Israel and the “Arab Spring”

Abstract

This paper seeks to offer a new perspective for analyzing the extent and form the Arab milieu have affected both on the internal dynamics of Arab society in Israel and on its attitude towards the State. The formative historical logic of the phenomenon known as the “Arab Spring” is a shattering of the existing order on various planes—the conceptual, social, and political. I suggest that this movement gave birth to an opposite tendency within Arab society in Israel. While it exacerbated the crisis of Israeli Arab national discourse and energized civil discourse as an antithesis to the discourse of the Jewish State, it also heightened—and even granted public legitimacy to—local, sub-nationalist frameworks and identities. The devastating, anarchical, and conflictual effects of these uprisings have heightened pragmatic and civil tendencies among the Arab populace in Israel. While the anarchy has intensified civil discourse toward the state, the outcome of the disintegration has leant moral and public legitimacy to different patterns of localism within the Arab society itself.