PA Education Ministry accuses Israel of forging Palestinian schoolbooks in Jerusalem schools

Headline: "The launch of a campaign to fight the occupation’s policies against the education in Jerusalem"

"[PA] Minister of Education and Higher Education Sabri Saidam and [PA] Minister of Jerusalem Affairs [and PLO Executive Committee member] Adnan Al-Husseini yesterday [Oct. 25, 2018] announced the launch of the national campaign to fight the occupation’s policies against the Palestinian education in the holy city [Jerusalem]. This was in order to stand against the dangerous forgery of the contents of the Palestinian schoolbooks by the Israeli Ministry of Education, which controls the public education in occupied Jerusalem.

This was said during a press conference that the [PA] Ministry of Education and Higher Education held yesterday in Ramallah in order to examine the consequences of the fact that the occupation is forging and distorting the Palestinian schoolbooks in occupied Jerusalem…

Saidam emphasized that the Jerusalem Committee will examine the issue and act to submit a lawsuit against those that forged the Palestinian schoolbooks. It will also act to put Israel on trial before all of the international human rights organizations and legal organizations and demand that Israel revoke these forged books.

Saidam noted that there are three types of schools in Jerusalem: government schools, schools of the [Palestinian] Islamic Waqf, and schools that are under the occupation's municipality and study the Israeli curriculum due to the pressures exerted on them by the occupation's municipality. He noted that some of the private schools teach the Palestinian curriculum, and warned of concerns that Israeli will attempt to take control of the Waqf schools in the next stage.

Minister Saidam said: ‘Israeli bodies have recently printed a forged version of the Palestinian schoolbooks and distributed them to the Arab schools that the occupation municipality supervises in occupied Jerusalem.’

He continued: ‘More precisely, in the forged versions we see that the forgery included all of the Palestinian books that are published by the [PA] Ministry of Education and Higher Education schoolbook center. The occupation intentionally removed the Palestinian flag from all of the book covers, and also the Palestinian keffiyeh (Arab headdress) known as the keffiyeh of [former PLO Chairman and PA] President Martyr (Shahid) Yasser Arafat, the name of the State of Palestine, and the name of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.’

…

Director-General of the Palestinian Curriculum Tharwat Zayd reviewed the main distortions and deletions that were made to the Palestinian schoolbooks. Zayd said: ‘The Israeli Ministry of Education is the one that supervised the forgery of the Palestinian schoolbooks, which began with distorting words and ended with omitting whole chapters and study materials.’”

Adnan Al-Husseini also holds the role of head of the PLO Department of Jerusalem Affairs.