If Israel Funded a Parallel “Arab Palestinian” Identity, It Funded Its Own Fracture

A recent article titled “Exposé: Israel Invested Millions in Boosting Palestinian Identity of Its Arab Citizens” alleges that state funds were used to strengthen a separate Palestinian national identity among Arab Israeli youth.

If this claim is false, it should be dismantled with documentation.

If it is true, it is not a minor bureaucratic mishap. It is a strategic self-inflicted wound.

Let us speak plainly.

Israel is not a federation of rival national projects. It is a sovereign state with a civic framework capable of including minorities without dissolving itself. Funding infrastructure in Arab communities is legitimate. Addressing crime, education, and employment gaps — all legitimate.

But funding the cultivation of a parallel national consciousness oriented against Israeli sovereignty? That is something else entirely.

That is not integration. That is segmentation.

And segmentation is the first move in the strategy I described in “Divide and Demonize.”

In that article, I explained how Israel’s enemies exploit its diversity — how they amplify internal differences, convert them into fractures, and then frame the Jewish state as inherently divided and unjust. Israel’s openness becomes the lever used against it. Our internal debates are broadcast, magnified, and weaponized.

If the state itself were to underwrite a narrative that reinforces a separate national consciousness among one segment of its citizens in tension with Israeli sovereignty — while failing to strengthen a shared civic identity across all citizens — that would mirror precisely the logic of Divide and Demonize, only from within.

The state would be subsidizing the fracture others seek to impose.

Now let us be clear about something fundamental, which I wrote explicitly in “Why Arab Identity Laundering?”:

Arab Israelis have no problem identifying as Arabs—before 1948, after, and today. They are happily part of Israeli society and face no identity crisis. They don’t need to be called Canaanites, Philistines, Palestinians, Judeans, or anything else. They proudly identify as Arab Israelis, even as external forces constantly try to redefine them and impose foreign identities for use in geopolitical games against Israel. All such attempts fail.

Arab Israelis have no problem identifying as Arabs—before 1948, after, and today. They are happily part of Israeli society and face no identity crisis. They don’t need to be called Canaanites, Philistines, Palestinians, Judeans, or anything else. They proudly identify as Arab Israelis, even as external forces constantly try to redefine them and impose foreign identities for use in geopolitical games against Israel. All such attempts fail.

Arab citizens of Israel are not confused about who they are. They are Arabs. They are Israelis. Many navigate layered identities as minorities in a Jewish-majority state. That is normal in democracies. In truth, layered identity is not unique to Arab citizens. Everyone in Israel — Jews included — navigates it: religious and secular, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, traditional and modern. Layered identity is not an anomaly. It is the texture of Israeli society — complexity itself.

In fact, Israeli society already offers powerful examples of integrated civic identity. Consider Lt. Col. Ella Waweya — widely known as “Captain Ella,” a senior Muslim officer tapped as the next IDF Arabic-language spokesperson (as reported in The Times of Israel). She is not an exception manufactured for headlines. She is a product of Israeli civic life. She serves the state openly and confidently as both Arab and Israeli.

It does not require erasing Arab identity. It does not require manufacturing a separate national consciousness. It requires strengthening Israeli civic belonging across all sectors of society.

What is not normal is the state appearing to elevate a specifically oppositional national framing — an “Arab Palestinian identity” cultivated as distinct from Israeli sovereignty and rhetorically aligned with UNRWA clientele outside Israel’s sovereign framework.

This is not about language. It is about strategic direction.

In “The Palestinian Identity Manifesto,” I argued that “Palestinian” is not an oppositional grievance badge. It is not a weaponized brand to be deployed against Jewish sovereignty. Historically and civically, the term once operated as a geographic designation. Jews used it proudly. Arabs largely rejected it — until it became geopolitically useful.

Israel is the legal and historical successor of Palestine — ancient, Roman, Ottoman, and Mandatory alike. It declared independence on May 14, 1948, just before the British Mandate formally expired at midnight. On May 15, Arab armies invaded Palestine.

Those who stayed became Palestinians.

Those who left became UNRWA clientele.

In “Stop Calling UNRWA Clientele ‘Palestinians’,” I explained how the term was detached from territorial continuity and converted into a perpetual refugee identity — a political instrument maintained across generations. When “Palestinian” is framed not as a civic Israeli identity grounded in sovereignty but as a transnational grievance category, it becomes a geopolitical tool.

When that same identity is cultivated inside Israel as a parallel national track, the contradiction becomes internalized. The Manifesto’s logic is inverted. What was once an externally weaponized narrative risks being institutionalized within the state itself. The term becomes a wedge, not a bridge — embedding separation where sovereignty requires cohesion.

That is precisely what I described in “Why Arab Identity Laundering?”: the constant external attempt to repackage identity for geopolitical ends — to convert Arab Israelis into a symbolic outpost of an unfinished war narrative, to transform citizens into leverage.

If Israeli state funds — even unintentionally — were used to reinforce that oppositional framing, then the state would be financing the laundering of identity against itself.

Some will say this is merely coalition politics. That budgets were allocated as part of parliamentary compromise. That development plans are technical matters.

Coalition bargaining explains money. It does not excuse strategic blindness.

Identity formation is not neutral in a conflict zone. Youth programming is not abstract sociology. In this region, identity is a mobilizing force. It is a political accelerant.

To pretend otherwise is naïve.

Now let us also reject hysteria. There is no evidence that a cabinet resolution declared: “Promote Palestinian nationalism.” Prime ministers do not micromanage workshop curricula. Ministries distribute funds. NGOs implement programs. Bureaucracies operate with autonomy.

But governance is not only about intent. It is also about oversight.

If funds intended for integration were channeled into programming that deepens national separation, that is a failure of supervision — not necessarily betrayal, not necessarily stupidity, but certainly strategic negligence.

And negligence in matters of identity carries consequences.

Israel’s strength lies in its ability to sustain a shared civic framework under Jewish sovereignty — one that accommodates minorities without dissolving the state’s character. That balance is delicate. It requires clarity, not ambiguity.

Lt. Col. Ella Waweya does not need identity laundering. She embodies integration without erasure. She serves in the IDF not because she abandoned her Arab heritage, but because Israeli identity is hers as fully as it is anyone’s.

The question raised by the exposé is therefore not about one politician. Not about Naftali Bennett. Not about Mansour Abbas. Not about one youth program.

It is about whether Israel understands the battlefield it inhabits.

In a region where narratives are weaponized, funding identity segmentation is not harmless pluralism. It is combustible material.

If the exposé is exaggerated, then let transparency settle it. Publish the program language. Show the budgets. Demonstrate the integrationist intent.

But if even a fraction of the claim is accurate — if state funds contributed to strengthening a separate national framing among only one segment of citizens, one rhetorically positioned in tension with Israeli sovereignty — then that is not progressive policy.

It is strategic self-fracture.

Every state has a foundational national framework. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. That civic and legal reality is not a parallel track; it is the sovereign structure within which all citizens live. It does not aim to detach a segment of society from the state. It defines the state.

What is fundamentally different is cultivating a national framing that positions part of the citizenry in symbolic alignment with a narrative historically constructed in opposition to that sovereignty. That is not inclusion. It is strategic bifurcation.

Diversity is a strength when anchored in shared sovereignty.

It becomes a liability when encouraged to drift into parallel nationalism.

Israel does not need to suppress Arab identity. Arab Israelis are secure in who they are. They do not require rebranding, repackaging, or ideological amplification.

What Israel needs is coherence.

And coherence is never achieved by subsidizing division.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)