This week, Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide confirmed that Norway has withheld over half a year’s funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) due to concerns over textbooks promoting hatred and violence.
In response to a written question on the subject, the Foreign Affairs Minister said that “the payment of more than half of the year’s planned sectoral support for education was withheld” while the government awaits the publication of an EU-commissioned review into the curriculum. “Disbursement of these funds will depend on the will and ability of Palestinian autonomous authorities to improve the syllabus”, she added.
The Foreign Minister said that in a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in February this year, she “communicated the government’s views on the matter, stressing that lack of improvements in the school curriculum could have budgetary implications for future Norwegian aid”.
In December 2019, the Norwegian parliament called on the PA to reform its curriculum, citing reports by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) that found that the most recent Palestinian Authority school textbooks are even more extreme than previous editions.
Last month, the European Parliament passed three resolutions condemning the PA for continuing to include hate speech and violent material in school textbooks.
The legislation said the European Parliament “is concerned that problematic material in Palestinian school textbooks has still not been removed and is concerned about the continued failure to act effectively against hate speech and violence in school textbooks”.
In March, former school teacher and newly elected Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis led his first Westminster Hall debate on the subject of radicalisation within the Palestinian school curriculum. 20 Conservative MPs were in attendance in the debate, which focused on concerns about the content of the PA’s school textbooks which contain incitement of hatred, martyrdom, and violence towards Israelis.
The debate followed an exposé in the Daily Mail at the start of the year, which laid bare the disturbing content of textbooks, and MPs have raised the issue on numerous occasions in the House of Commons in recent years.
