The construction of victimhood nationalism as insidious trauma in prolonged conflicts: ideological and institutional transformations of the Israeli Arab leadership following October 2000

Since the October 2000 uprisings, Israel’s Arab citizens evolved from a marginal group to an assertive national minority at the forefront of the Palestinian National Movement in challenging the Jewish State. This transformation is explained through two interrelated arguments. First, the political engine behind it was the adoption of victimhood nationalism, a narrative predicated on the idea of the Nakba as collective/cultural ‘insidious trauma’. This narrative, identified until mid-1990s with a small nationalist faction of the Arab sector, became the dominant ideology of the Arab sector’s leadership. Second, the October 2000 events and the way in which they were investigated by the Or Commission played a central role in the success of the nationalist faction to dominate the political discourse of Arabs in Israel.