Former PA Education Minister expresses pride in removal of Israel, peace agreements with Israel from PA schoolbooks

Text and image posted on the Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee member and former PA Minister of Education Sabri Saidam

Posted text: "[Israeli newspaper] Yediot Aharonot published an article today [Oct. 7, 2019] related to the Palestinian [PA] schoolbooks, which says:

'In the last three years, the Palestinian [PA] Ministry of Education has carried out a reform in all of the schoolbooks from first grade to 12th grade and removed all content connected to the peace process with Israel, except for a small part on the Oslo Accords, in contrast to the details that were in the old schoolbooks'… [ellipsis in source] 'The new books referred to Israel [only] a few times, and its name was written in quotation marks, "Israel"’ (for the actual quotes see note below –Ed.).

Everyone is invited to respond, please!"

The image shows covers of PA schoolbooks.

The actual quotes from the article published in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Oct. 7, 2019 are as follows:

"In the last three years the Palestinian [PA] Ministry of Education in Ramallah has carried out a reform and update of all of its schoolbooks for grades one through 12 in three stages. This year the update reform ended and it was discovered that it included the removal and concealing of all of the agreements and rounds of negotiations that took place between it and Israel in recent decades, except for the Oslo Accords that were signed in the first half of the 1990s. This material appeared in the old version of the schoolbooks before they were updated…

The few times in which Israel is mentioned in the new schoolbooks, its name is written in parentheses (Israel) – a practice that expresses illegitimacy that is common mainly among extremist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Israel's name was written without parentheses in the old schoolbooks."