In Brief: EU pledges not to fund Palestinian textbooks over incitement

Image: IMPACT – se

The European Union will make sure it does not fund Palestinian Authority school textbooks that incite hatred against Israel and Jews, EU commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement Oliver Varhelyi said last week.

“Israel does not oppose aid to the Palestinian Authority, but we will not allow a situation in which those funds indirectly fund terrorism or incitement against Israel”, foreign minister Eli Cohen said.

Varhelyi added that the EU will fund additional research on incitement and antisemitism in PA textbooks, following previous papers on the topic from 2019 and 2021.

The PA school curriculum has repeatedly been found to promote hatred and violence towards Israel and Jews, including the glorification of terrorism and basing routine exercises such as mathematical problems in conflict situations, such as firing a slingshot.

The inciteful content has been linked to a number of terror attacks against Israelis committed by Palestinian minors.

The EU also agreed to work with Israel to strengthen and expand the Abraham Accords, forged between Israel and four Arab states in 2020.

Cohen met with Varhelyi in Brussels last week, where he also urged the EU to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – the Iranian regime’s ideological terror army – as a terrorist organisation.