Arab leaders decry Likud minister’s refusal to fund major community development plan

Social Equality Minister May Golan has diverted tens of millions of shekels earmarked to boost Arab economic development to other programs within her ministry, the latest in a series of blows the Likud politician has dealt the program.

Golan’s move last month, laid out in a government decision, cut NIS 66 million ($18.2 million) from the allocated budget of a five-year plan aimed at putting Arab communities on par with Jewish counterparts in areas such as housing, policing and economic development after decades of neglect.

The NIS 30 billion ($8.3 billion) plan was created in 2021 under the short-lived Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, with the Social Equality Ministry bearing most of the responsibility for implementation of the groundbreaking program.

But Arab community leaders lament that Golan has consistently refused to implement the plan since taking over the ministry last year, putting much of the promised funds in limbo.

Within her first few months in office in 2024, Golan fired the ministry’s director, who was charged with executing the five-year plan, and stopped convening the standing committee that oversaw the allocation of the plan’s budget.

But this most recent step was “unprecedented,” said Amir Bisharat, who leads the National Committee of Heads of Arab Local Authorities.

“It’s never happened that there are funds meant for Arab society, and [a minister] takes from them and transfers it to other uses that aren’t related to Arab society,” Bisharat told The Times of Israel.

Golan and a ministry spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last month, the minister justified diverting the money by claiming that funds going toward Arab locales have no oversight and thus would fall into the hands of criminals.

“Billions will not be distributed without enforcement and supervision,” Golan told the Ynet news site last month.

Officials from the Shin Bet security service, which has joined the effort to rein in rampant deadly crime in the Arab community, told the outlet they feared Golan’s decision could further worsen violence, or lead to a repeat of ethnic rioting that erupted during an Israeli offensive in Gaza in May 2021.

Officials in the agency apparently approached Golan over her refusal to transfer the NIS 66 million, urging her to release the funds.

According to Ynet, which attributed its information to unnamed security sources, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar tried to convince Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar to wrest control over the plan’s budget away from May, but the Likud politician refused to do so.

The Shin Bet declined requests from The Times of Israel and Ynet for comment.

MK Ahmad Tibi of Ta’al, an Arab party, noted that Golan had not tried to solve the issues she claimed were holding up the funds transfers.

“From the very beginning, she argued that they are being transferred to criminal actors and that she wanted supervision, [but] she never set up a supervision mechanism and is now keeping the money in her ministry,” Tibi charged.

If anything, Golan’s refusal to convene the standing committee has loosened supervision of the funds, Umm al-Fahm Mayor Samir Mahamid told The Times of Israel.

Funds for the plan come from several other ministries as well as Golan’s, some of which have continued to allocate the budgets based on the priorities of individual ministers, with the panel no longer in control of the flow of money, Mahamid explained.

While funding for education and housing has remained stable, budgeting for roads in Arab communities declined sharply under Transportation Minister Miri Regev, according to Bisharat.

“The budget during the ‘change government’ was about NIS 2 billion — NIS 1 billion per year — and then in the current government it fell to NIS 500 million,” he said, referring to the Bennett-Lapid administration. “This year it’s fallen even further to NIS 350 million.”

Much of the blame for this, Bisharat charged, falls on Golan, a right-wing firebrand known for her brash anti-Arab and anti-migrant rhetoric, who was appointed to the post in January 2024.

She should be urging ministers to follow through on their obligations under Government Decision 550, he said.

“If we had a [social equality] minister who cared, they would bang on the table in front of Miri Regev, but May Golan, what does she care?” the Arab leader lamented.

But Bisharat rejected the notion that the funds lack oversight entirely, citing supervision by Israel’s Accountant General and external audits.

Meanwhile, Arab locales are struggling to fill funding gaps.

“There’s been a drastic decline over the past two years,” said Mahamid, the Umm al-Fahm mayor. “In all of Arab society, not just here.”

In Umm al-Fahm specifically, Mahamid said that the municipality is struggling to pay for previously tendered projects, especially the construction of public buildings.

Arab locales have taken “a very hard hit” financially with the entry of the current government, Baqa al-Gharbiya Mayor Ra’ed Daka said. He noted that the Finance Ministry, run by Religious Zionism chairman Bezalel Smotrich, had also played a role in stripping municipalities of funds.

In June 2024, the National Committee of Heads of Arab Local Authorities brought a lawsuit against the finance minister before the High Court of Justice, over Smotrich’s holdup of NIS 200 million ($55 million) intended for economic development in the Arab sector.

“I contend — alongside leaders in other Arab locales — that her motivations are racist ones: hatred of Arabs. She also expresses this publicly,” said Mahamid of Golan.

Bisharat similarly accused Golan of fearmongering against Israel’s Arab minority with charged rhetoric about the funds going to criminal elements.

“This is part of the incitement against Arab Israelis,” he said. “It has created this sense in the government that money intended for Arab society has become something of a black hole, because she talks about supervision as if there is none.”