North africa see herself as Arabs, but not a DNA base, but more of a cultural view. Language/history/religions etc.... But if you ask a north african which ancestor you belong, they will tell you berbers/arabs/europeans/Phoenicians
When you ask Arabs in Arabia what they consider themselves they will say Arabs too but that does not mean that we deny the fact that we also descend from native non-Arab Semitic peoples (and non-Semitic peoples) and civilizations.
For God's sake we have Southern Semitic speaking peoples in Southern Arabia (Yemen, Oman etc.) who are as native as anybody yet they do not consider themselves Arab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Semitic_languages
Let me give you an concrete example. In KSA, contrary to popular believe, we have some of the most diverse people and basically we have citizens of all origins. Africans, Uzbeks, Turks, Persians, Caucasians, South Asians, South East Asians. Descendants of Muslim pilgrims who went to Makkah and Madinah for the past 1400 years. Nowadays they are Saudi Arabian citizens and their families have lived in Hijaz (mostly) for centuries and intermarried with locals and other peoples. They consider themselves Arabs and also have Arab ancestry but they are obviously not "pure" whatever that means.
Arabs might be one of the oldest recorded ethnic groups which a history of at least 3000 years but in the Arab world, the Arabian Peninsula included, you had many other peoples who predate Arabs. Arabs did obviously not jump down from the sky 3000 years ago but the people who began to call themselves Arabs and started to speak Arabic 3000 years ago in the borderlands of Arabia, Levant and Mesopotamia, were obviously descendants of previous native civilizations and peoples who happened to be closely related due to sharing similar ethnic groups (Semites and Hamites) and speaking similar languages and having mostly similar cultures and obviously geographic proximity.
This below describes it well:
Before the expansion of the
Arab Empire, "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic people from the
northern to the
central Arabian Peninsula and from the
Syrian Desert.
[32][33] Currently "Arab" refers to a large number of people whose native regions form the Arab world. The ties that bind Arabs are
ethnic,
linguistic,
cultural,
historical,
identical,
geographicaland
political.
[34][35][36] The Arabs have their own customs,
language,
architecture,
art,
literature,
music,
dance,
media,
cuisine,
dress,
society,
sports and
mythology.
[37][38][39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabs
A more simple solution, which many have been proponents of lately, is that everyone who has Arabic as a mother tongue and considers himself an Arab, is an Arab.
At the end of the day all humans have the same DNA and ethnic groups are largely social constructs but it is nevertheless a fact that certain regions, like the Arab world, have specific haplgroups and cluster with each other. Same story with other parts of the world.
That however does not mean that all Arabs have the exact same history or culture which many non-Arabs misunderstand or are simply unable to understand.
You go to KSA and have such a discussion and you will witness long discussions among Hijazis, Hasawis, Southerners, Northerns etc. doing their utmost to show how "different" they are from say Najdis (the dominating minority). Similar to the city-countryside divide in every Arab country.
You think that an cosmopolitan Tunisian from Tunis has the same identical culture or identity as an nomadic Berber/Arab in Southern or Central Tunisia?
Such discussions are simply too simplistic.
