National and Civic Identities of Palestinians in Israel

Abstract

Similarity measures were obtained from 77 Palestinians living in Israel about 17 attitudes toward their national and civic identities. The symmetric similarity matrices were subjected to a multidimensional scaling analysis. Results showed that (a) the Arabic language and cultural heritage were key factors in the participants' national identity; (b) of two orthogonal dimensions that emerged, a national-Palestinian dimension and a civic-Israeli dimension, the former was judged twice as important; (c) the Zionist movement and Israel's policies toward its Palestinian citizens were evaluated negatively on both dimensions; and (d) political and social aspects of the national identity were evaluated positively on the national dimension but negatively on the civic dimension.