The Arab Belt (Arabic: الحزام العربي, romanized: al-hizām al-ʿarabī; Kurdish: که‌مبه‌را عه‌ره‌بی, romanized: Kembera Erebî) was a project undertaken by Ba'athist Syria, which aimed to Arabize the northern areas of the Al-Hasakah Governorate, to the detriment of other ethnic groups, particularly the Kurds.

It primarily involved the expulsion of Kurds from public land used as pasture, and the settlement of Arabs, in their place. The program was implemented in 1973; deporting around 140,000 Kurds and confiscating their lands around a 180-mile strip. Thousands of Arabs—around 4,000 families who were displaced by the creation of Euphrates Lake in Raqqa—were then granted these lands to establish settlements.

During Ottoman rule in 1517–1917, the interior of Upper Mesopotamia (lands south of the Baghdad–Berlin railway line, east of the Euphrates, and west of the Tigris) was a "no man's land", incorporated de jure under the Mosul, Aleppo, and Diyarbekir Ottoman vilayets as well as the Deir Ez-Zor Sanjak.

Primarily, the region was inhabited by the semi-nomadic Arab tribes of Shammar and Tayy (see 1907 map below). However, the northern and eastern fringes, near Mosul and Mardin, were populated by Syriac-speaking Aramean and Assyrian Christians as well as Muslim Arab Bedouins of the aforementioned Arab tribes. As John G. Taylor states in 1866: "The northern part of Mesopotamia, in which Nisibin is situated, is peopled by Arabs and Turcomans". Taylor counts the Arabs as a total of 81,000 (souls) in 13500 households (tents). As for the Turcomans, who he comments "are erroneously called Kurds", their population is detailed as 1600 tents mostly centered around Veyranshehr. He also provided a table illustrating the ratio of Arabs to Kurds as 2.3:1, see below.

During the 19th century, however, large Kurdish-speaking tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from eastern Anatolia and the northwestern areas of the Zagros. The largest of these tribal groups was the powerful Reshwan tribe, which was initially based in Adıyaman Province. Clans from another Anatolian tribe, the Milli confederation mentioned in 1518 onward, moved into the area.

Upon the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the Jazirah was divided into three parts, between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. All three new nation-states left the region as a hinterland with little to no government attention or subsidies; even in the 21st century literacy rates and household income exhibit a stark difference between those regions and other regions.

In the 1920s, the number of Kurds in the Syrian Jazirah was estimated from 20,000 to 25,000 people, out of 100,000 inhabitants. In 1927, there were exactly 47 Kurdish-majority villages and towns. By 1929, following Kurdish expulsion from Turkey under Kemalist policies and the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion (1925) and the Ararat rebellion (1927–1930), these now numbered over 800. Some Kurdish Alevis, fleeing the persecution of the Turkish army during the Dersim massacre, also settled in Afrin and Mabeta in the 1930s. This was all directly supported by the French High Commissioner of the Levant through the Terrier Plan in order to increase the profits of the area as well as to "divide and conquer".

Danish writer C. Niebuhr who traveled to Arabia and Upper Mesopotanmia in 1764 recorded five nomadic Kurdish tribes (Dukurie, Kikie, Schechchanie, Mullie and Aschetie) and six Arab tribes (Tay, Kaab, Baggara, Geheish, Diabat and Sherabeh) in the area around Mardin. According to Niebuhr, the Kurdish tribes were settled near Mardin in Turkey, and paid the governor of that city for the right to graze their herds in the Syrian Jazira.