ICSPR calls on the European Union to abolish the requirement to amend the Palestinian curricula to continue supporting UNRWA
Ref: 125/2021
Date: 13 Oct 2021
Press release,
ICSPR calls on the European Union to abolish the requirement to amend the Palestinian curricula to continue supporting UNRWA
The International Commission to Support Palestinians’ Rights (ICSPR) follows up with great concern the info indicating that the European Union required amendments and revisions to the Palestinian curricula in order to continue supporting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The proposed amendments refer to the replacement of a number of terms and expressions in the curricula of classrooms at the basic stages, such as removing the map of Palestine, removing exercises related to Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, removing the phrase (Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine), removing the picture of the apartheid wall, and replacing it with an image of a waterfall in one of the Arabic language lessons in the first grade of primary school, and other terms and expressions rooted in the Palestinian cultural heritage.
Earlier this year, the European Union’s Budget Committee approved an amendment to its 2022 budget to withhold funds earmarked for UNRWA support and contingent upon revisions to the Palestinian curriculum.
ICSPR considers that the new European trends and decisions are a clear departure from the system of human and moral values adopted by the European Union, and emphasizes that these decisions constitute unequivocal political and financial blackmail aims to further weaken UNRWA, besiege it, and question its credibility in order to serve the agenda of the Israeli occupation; ICSPR is astonished by the European support for Israel, whose curricula are full of racism and incitement to hatred against Arabs. Therefore:
- ICSPR calls on the European Union to immediately abolish these non-objective and illegal directives and decisions.
- ICSPR urges the factional and societal forces to take immediate and urgent action, in terms of confronting the Israeli-American-European projects that seek to hijack the Palestinian curriculum.
- ICSPR calls on the Palestinian leadership to mobilize official and popular diplomacy, including mobilizing and utilizing all available spaces at various levels, in order to form a unified national position rejecting these dangerous measures.
