Education in the Palestinian Authority: a combination of Palestinian ethos, incitement and deception against Israel

The article seeks to examine how the State of Israel is presented in Palestinian Authority school textbooks and in other educational documents. The major argument is that the PA violated the Oslo Accords with Israel (1993) and turned its education system into a hothouse for incitement and deception. The methodology is based on analysis of textbooks from the first to twelfth grade, and examination of contents, photos, caricatures, maps, texts and stories, and mentioning of Palestinian martyrs. The paper reveals a concentration on cultivating the Palestinian national ethos, which is based on victimhood, justice, and victory. The Palestinian Authority preserves these constituents and instructs the Palestinian Ministry of Education to teach generations of children with a focus on the British betrayal, the Arabs’ defeat in the 1948 war (Nakba), the readiness to sacrifice lives for the national vision (Shahadah, sit a long time in Israeli prisons), and territory. At the same time, the textbooks were changed, and the contents ignore the existence of Israel and do not mention its name. ‘The curriculum teaches students to be expendable martyrs, rejects negotiations, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel and focuses on a “return” to an exclusively Palestinian homeland’.