Yes. Napoleon the third in 1863 attempted to make the tribes and sub-tribes the irreplaceable owners of the territories which they occupied and to limit agrarian colonization. He said in a letter that he felt himself 'as much the Emperor of the Arabs as Emperor of the French'. Now in practice that mostly came out as an attempt to make the Arabs French citizens.

But Bruno Étienne has claimed that he'd made it clear that his ultimate end game was a French client 'Kingdom of the Arabs' headed by Abdelkader El Djezairi (the Algerian emir) separate to the coastal cities that would be integrated into France. (The ultimate pie in the sky aim was that in due time Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt would also be part of that Kingdom of Arabs). Though if he did offer this to Abd el-Kader, he was pretty clearly turned down. It wasn't a situation that I think could actually work, Abdelkader was only freed and exiled over massive opposition from the French government and with the promise to never return to Algeria, and because his support in Algeria was so clearly derived from the jihadists, he couldn't agree a peace with France and still keep power.

But the proposal was for a split Algeria with both entities being under French Rule but one being berber majority and run by berber chiefs and one not. He'd call it kingdom of the arabs rather than kingdom of the berbers largely because of the prestige of arabisation. A lot of berbers claimed to be of arab descent even if they weren't.

Never came anywhere near actually happening, obviously.