Social Equality Minister May Golan of the Likud party is pushing a proposal that defies logic: transferring NIS 3 billion from the five-year development plan for Arab citizens to the police budget run by Otzma Yehudit’s Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister. The stated goal is fighting crime. The actual effect would be to fuel it.
Golan’s proposal will do precisely this, dismantling prevention programs to fund enforcement that has already proven catastrophically ineffective under Ben-Gvir’s leadership.
The numbers are damning. Since Ben-Gvir took office in late 2022, murders in Arab communities have doubled. In 2023, 244 Arab Israelis were killed, more than double the previous year. As of November 2025, the death toll continues climbing, with over 220 killed this year, a 9% increase over the same period last year.
Doubling crime numbers
But the statistics only tell part of the story. Ben-Gvir’s actions speak louder than any promises. Upon taking office, he systematically dismantled programs designed to reduce Arab-sector crime.
He canceled “Stop the Bleeding,” a multi-agency initiative operating in seven Arab towns that was already showing results, dismissing the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee that ran it as a “leftist organization.” He gutted “Safe Route,” the NIS 2.5 billion program launched under prime minister Naftali Bennett, insisting it “would not continue as it had been.” The result? Murder rates doubled in his first year.
This is the minister to whom Golan now proposes transferring NIS 3 billion, a minister who canceled programs that were working, under whose watch murder rates doubled, and whom his own coalition partner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, publicly accused of completely failing to stem illegal weapons.
What would Golan’s transfer eliminate? According to Co-Impact, NIS 677 million would be cut from the Education Ministry, halting construction of classrooms and kindergartens and canceling gap-reduction programs; NIS 141 million from Welfare, closing frameworks for at-risk youth and firing social workers; NIS 184 million from Labor, stopping professional training and Hebrew courses. This is not a budget adjustment. It is the erasure of a future.
Golan cannot claim these programs are failing. A Knesset Research Center study from February 2025 found that 90% of Resolution 550’s operational tasks were completed in its first year, with high implementation rates continuing. Rather than complete outstanding tasks, the government prefers to erase them entirely. Instead of solutions, excuses.
The claim that these funds will strengthen the fight against crime for Arab society’s benefit is gaslighting. Government Resolution 549, adopted alongside 550, already allocated NIS 1.5 billion specifically for police enforcement. Where is the accounting for those funds? What has been achieved beyond record murder rates?
An opportunity for democratic values
Israel must see its Arab minority not as a burden but as an opportunity. The opportunity to demonstrate that a Jewish state can respect and promote its minorities. The opportunity to prove that democratic values and minority rights are not slogans but practice. And the opportunity to harness the economic and social potential of 21% of its citizens, potential the Bank of Israel has repeatedly emphasized is essential for national growth.
The first five-year plan was passed by a Netanyahu government in 2016 and the second was passed in 2021 by the Bennett-Lapid government, representing nonpartisan strategic recognition. So why would ministers now undermine their own policy?
When Golan took office, she immediately fired director-general Meir Bing, the same official her Likud predecessor Amichai Chikli had praised as “one of the highest quality director-generals in public service.” Bing’s offense? Speaking courageously about the importance of development budgets for Arab society.
What has Bing to say about Golan’s proposal? “The five-year plan has many achievements, a surge in matriculation rates, women entering the workforce, and university students. Halting it is a significant blow to Arab society, but no less so to the Israeli economy. It is unwise to transfer resources from long-term crime prevention to point-by-point treatment of crime, which we have seen is not optimal.”
The potential outcomes of this proposal extend beyond Arab citizens. Young people without opportunities become an economic burden. Crime flourishing in neglected communities does not respect municipal boundaries. The state appears to have abandoned its basic role of enforcing law and order, and the idea that investing in the Arab community is a national interest.
The cabinet should reject this proposal; not as a favor to Arab citizens but as a matter of basic self-interest – economic, social, and moral. You cannot damage 21% of society without ultimately harming 100% of it.
The writer is founding partner of Goldrock Capital and founder of The Institute for Jewish and Zionist Research. He chairs a number of NGOs, including Leshem, ICAR, and ReHome, and is a former chair of Gesher and World Bnei Akiva.