This paper argues that the 1983 Haifa Municipal Theater’s Arabic-language iteration of The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona does not so much translate its South African source (although writer, translator and intellectual Anton Shammas incontestably renders it into both Arabic and Hebrew) as cite it at a constitutive remove from South Africa. Through transposing the play into Arabic as well as through the use of non-traditional casting, Amit Gazit’s production redoubles the metatheoretical charge of the original while catalyzing a discourse directed at Israeli rather than at South African politics. Although not entirely divorced from earlier Hebrew-language productions of Fugard’s sole-authored or collaborative plays that (nominally) allied themselves with the international anti-apartheid struggle, the Arabic-language iteration of The Island served as a decisive switch point for cultural negotiations around Black and Palestinian identities within the Israeli public sphere during the mid-nineteen-eighties.