PA’s Abbas to send delegation to UNESCO to review Palestinian curriculum
The PA commits to UNESCO to remove hate speech from textbooks, but the Israeli government and IMPACT-se accuse its recent curriculum of still inciting violence and antisemitism.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that he will be sending a high-level Palestinian delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to review the Palestinian education curricula.
The aim is to consult UNESCO to align the Palestinian curriculum with the international standards it has adopted while still “preserving the essence of Palestinian national consciousness.”
The delegation is set to be headed by the Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Education and Higher Education.
The announcement followed a phone call between Abbas, UNESCO Director-General Khaled Al-Anani, who recently assumed the role. Abbas also stated during a joint press conference with French President Macron earlier this month that the curriculum overhaul will proceed in the next two years.
“We agreed on the importance of reforming school textbooks, which must exclude all hate speech in accordance with UNESCO standards,” Macron announced.
The UNESCO logo is seen during the opening of the 39th session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at their headquarters in Paris, France, October 30, 2017. (credit: REUTERS/PHILIPPE WOJAZER)
Palestinian textbooks still incite antisemitism
The Israeli government and various NGOs have repeatedly accused the Palestinian educational system of radicalizing pupils and of perpetuating antisemitism.
The organization, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), has been reporting on Palestinian textbooks since 1998.
Most recently, IMPACT-se reviewed the PA’s new curriculum for Gaza in February 2025.
It found that despite the PA’s commitments to the European Union (EU) in July 2024, that it would reform its educational content in full adherence to UNESCO’s standards of peace and tolerance, “these newly created materials contain antisemitic content that encourages students to acts of violence, justified on both nationalistic and religious grounds, as has been documented many times in PA textbooks.”
In 2022, Dr. Arnon Groiss wrote that PA education has three fundamentals. The first is the delegitimization of Israel’s existence and the Jews’ very presence in the country, which includes the denial of their history and the existence of any Jewish holy places there.
The second one is the demonization of both Israel and Jews, with implications regarding the Jews’ image in the eyes of children who hail from a traditional society. Finally, the third one is the incitement and the absence of a call for peace with Israel.
Groiss is director of the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research and the author of Genesis of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA: Road Block to Peace.
