Organisations like Sharaka are often presented by Israeli and international media as “peace builders” and “bridge makers”. Yet beneath that language, the organisation appears to operate as part of a wider Israeli public diplomacy network built around the Abraham Accords, soft normalisation, and the production of Arab voices willing to defend Israel in Western, academic and political spaces.
Founded shortly after the Abraham Accords by figures from Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, Sharaka presents itself as a non-governmental and non-profit organisation promoting dialogue between Israelis and people from the Arab and Muslim world. Its public slogans speak of reshaping the Middle East, building friendship and creating “warm peace”. However, its activities, leadership, partners and networks point to something far more political: an organised effort to normalise Israel across the region while using Arab and Muslim figures to counter pro-Palestinian narratives abroad.
From Normalisation to Political Engineering
Sharaka’s early activities included Gulf delegations visiting occupied Palestine, meetings with Israeli officials, tours of the Holocaust museum, visits to the Western Wall, and engagements with Israeli diplomatic and Jewish community institutions in the United States. Delegations from Bahrain, Morocco, Pakistan and other countries were later drawn into similar programmes, often under the language of tolerance, interfaith understanding and regional cooperation.
These visits were not limited to cultural exchange. They served a strategic purpose: to create public-facing Arab and Muslim advocates who could present Israel as accepted, misunderstood and worthy of sympathy. In several cases, participants later became active in Israeli-aligned advocacy campaigns, media appearances, academic programmes and international forums connected to the Abraham Accords.
The organisation’s reach expanded through university programmes, Holocaust education initiatives, Abraham Accords groups in the UK and the US, and partnerships with political, academic, business and Jewish institutional networks. This gives Sharaka a role beyond dialogue. It helps build a protective infrastructure around Israel’s image, especially in Western spaces where Palestinian advocacy has gained visibility.
The Security and Military Background Behind the “Dialogue”
A major issue with Sharaka is the background of several of its Israeli organisers. The organisation is not simply led by neutral peace activists. Its leadership overlaps with Israeli military, intelligence and public diplomacy circles.
Amit Deri, Sharaka’s president, is connected to Israeli military preparatory education and to organisations such as Reservists on Duty, which works to counter the BDS movement and send Israeli military veterans, including minority representatives, to Western campuses to defend Israel’s image. Deri has also served in the Israeli occupation army’s reserves.
Dan Feferman, a co-founder of Sharaka, served for years as an intelligence officer in the Israeli occupation army and later worked in Israeli military public affairs. Other figures linked to Sharaka have backgrounds in Unit 8200, Israeli digital diplomacy, military communications, technology, open-source intelligence and international advocacy.
This matters because Sharaka’s language of coexistence and understanding sits on top of a structure deeply tied to Israeli security thinking. Its work appears less like neutral dialogue and more like public diplomacy with a strategic objective: defending Israel, weakening Palestinian solidarity and recruiting Arab and Muslim faces into that narrative.
Manufacturing the “Arab Zionist”
One of Sharaka’s most controversial outcomes is the elevation of Arab and Muslim figures who openly defend Israel, sometimes even describing themselves as “Arab Zionists”. The article identifies names from Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE, Iraq, Pakistan, India and Africa who have been used in different advocacy settings to present Israel as humane, tolerant and regionally accepted.
These figures are often amplified in Western media, think tanks, pro-Israel platforms, Holocaust commemoration events and Abraham Accords programmes. Many have limited organic influence in their own societies, yet once they adopt a strongly pro-Israel posture, they are quickly promoted into international panels, fellowships, media interviews and diplomatic spaces.
This creates a manufactured impression that Arab and Muslim societies are moving naturally towards embracing Israel. In reality, the need to rely on such figures shows the opposite. Israel still struggles to gain genuine moral legitimacy across the region, particularly while its wars, occupation and violence against Palestinians remain central to Arab and Muslim political memory.
Sharaka After 7 October
The events after 7 October exposed the limits of Sharaka’s model. As Gaza was devastated and images of mass death, destruction and displacement spread across the world, Israel’s attempt to present itself through soft normalisation became much harder to sustain.
Sharaka continued its activities, including post-7 October delegations, but the atmosphere changed. Some delegations became quieter, less public and more cautious. Criticism in countries such as Morocco and Algeria showed that public opposition to normalisation remained strong, especially when Israel’s assault on Gaza made the moral cost of defending it impossible to ignore.
For Sharaka’s organisers, this exposed a problem: governments may maintain relations with Israel, but public opinion across the Arab and Muslim world remains deeply attached to Palestine. This is why the organisation’s work increasingly targets Western audiences, parliaments, universities and media platforms, where carefully selected Arab and Muslim voices can be used to soften Israel’s image.
Not Partnership, but Political Cover
Sharaka presents itself as a platform for partnership. Yet its structure, messaging and alliances suggest that it functions as a public diplomacy instrument serving Israel’s regional and international legitimacy campaign.
Its partnerships span Israeli official institutions, Jewish advocacy organisations, Western universities, Abraham Accords bodies, pro-Israel media platforms and political networks. While it speaks the language of peace, its work often centres on reframing Israel as the victim, marginalising Palestinian suffering and placing Arab voices at the front of Israeli advocacy.
The deeper failure, however, is moral. A state that needs to borrow Arab voices to defend its legitimacy reveals the fragility of that legitimacy. A natural political entity does not need to manufacture “partners” from among those whose region it has wounded for generations.
Sharaka may call its work dialogue, peace and coexistence. But in the shadow of Gaza’s ruins, its project appears less like reconciliation and more like an attempt to place a human face over an inhuman reality.
