Identity repertoires among Arabs in Israel

Abstract

This study investigates the structure and components of the Arab identity repertoire in Israel. We analyse the relative salience of each component and the structural relations among the components. In addition we interpret the meanings associated with each component of the Arab identity repertoire in Israel. Our study differs from traditional investigations of Arab identities in Israel in considering identity as a multi‐dimensional phenomenon, and in interpreting the meanings that the respondents assign to the relevant identities. Empirically we find that most Arabs in Israel feel strongly attached to at least three identities, none of them dominating the others. The correlations among the identities are low, meaning that they are only marginally affected by the feasibility of alternative identities and more by the type of practices performed in each respective milieu. In this respect it is interesting to see that the Palestinian identity is not associated with citizenship beyond national pride, while the Israeli identity is expected to supply them with a sense of citizenship. Our finding that different groups constitute for themselves different relations among the components of the identity repertoire suggests that our multi‐dimensional model supplies a better explanation for the structure of Arab repertoires of identities.

Keywords:

• Identity Repertoire
• Palestinians
• Arabs in Israel
• Druze
• Religion

Notes

Muhammad Amara is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and English, Bar‐Ilan University, Ramat‐Gan, Israel. Izhak Schnell is Associate Professor in and Chairperson of the Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Correspondence to: E‐mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

The term repertoire is borrowed from music, and it is widely employed in sociolinguistics. It includes all the languages and varieties known and used by a specific community. In a similar vein, we apply the concept to the study of identity in the sense of a set of multitudes of identities with complex interrelations among them.

We chose to interview equal numbers of respondents in each town since we intend to compare communities in our wider study. The equal sample secures representation to small towns and enables comparison. Since we do not know about internal variability we do not have any reason to adopt different sample size, assuming that internal variability has a much larger effect on sample size than population size in a town. In order to overcome distortion in the total sample, we made the necessary adjustments for each community: Moslems, Druze, Christians and Bedouins.

Chi‐square test equals 0.0001.

Chi‐square test equals 0.0001.

The correlations between education and type of locality on the one hand and the type of identity on the other are low and insignificant, therefore we did not include them in the analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Muhammad Amara

Muhammad Amara is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and English, Bar‐Ilan University, Ramat‐Gan, Israel. Izhak Schnell is Associate Professor in and Chairperson of the Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Correspondence to: E‐mail: [email protected]; [email protected]