This paper explores the conflict between the Arab political strategies with its nation in order to identify the struggle of the Arab nation with the state system (nation-state) and the Arab nation‘s struggle for its unity. The concepts of new nationalism and old nationalism are used in the analysis in order to expose the conflict between the ethnic nationalism Haweyya Qawmeyya and the new political nationalism Haweyya Wataneyya. These two aspects of the nationalist struggles highlight the crisis, known as Arab Spring that afflicts the Arab world today. It is argued that the suppression of the political struggles to assert a new civic state identity collides with the original ethnic identity. Drawing from the novel of Munis Arrazzaz‘s Alive In The Dead Sea that shows the protagonist‘s struggle with two forms of nationalist ideals, we illustrate how the novelist foreshadows the Arab national unity crisis with its political strategies and the current conflict that beleaguers the present Arab world.