Palestinian School Textbooks: EU Review Debate
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Bob Blackman
Main Page: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)Department Debates - View all Bob Blackman's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Palestinian School Textbooks: EU Review
Bob Blackman Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) on securing the debate, and draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, particularly as chair of the all-party Britain-Israel parliamentary group and as an officer of Conservative Friends of Israel.
I have been raising these issues in relation to Palestinian textbooks on behalf of my constituents for many years. It has become abundantly clear that the children of the Palestinian territories have been cruelly let down by those who have responsibility for their education. As we have heard, there are extensive examples within the EU report that the Palestinian curriculum is deeply flawed and, sadly, rife with material that passes hatred and prejudice on to the new generation of young people. That just exacerbates the conflict and must not continue.
The curriculum is deeply problematic. It is exacerbated by the fact that the educational resources are essentially the same as those used by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Last year, we gave around £20 million to fund Palestinian teachers’ salaries, and £63.6 million to UNRWA to support the education of 320,000 children in 370 schools. In January this year, it was discovered that the additional educational material produced and published by UNRWA for schools in the west bank and Gaza, and distributed to the Palestinian children to aid home learning during covid, glorified terrorism and incited violence against Israel. Those supplementary resources—three in Gaza and one in the west bank—were even more extreme than the official PA curriculum, and again in breach of the UN values.
UNRWA has tried to defend the existence of that so-called “inappropriate” material, saying that it was “mistakenly” distributed to students at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. It has been widely available now for more than eight months. The UK was joined by Germany and Norway in expressing concerns, while our allies Australia and Canada launched investigations. Subsequently, the US Secretary of State has confirmed that the Biden Administration’s renewal of funding for UNRWA is conditional on its making “very necessary reforms”.
Despite that, further accusations have been made about the material that has been available. In one exercise, pupils in the ninth grade were taught to condemn Arab-Israeli peace and normalisation initiatives and to claim that they serve only to weaken the resolve of Palestinians. It goes without saying that that is in direct contravention of the UN values. In the light of that, I ask our Minister what the Government will do to pressurise UNRWA into pursuing those very necessary reforms. Does he agree that UNRWA has a responsibility to nurture young Palestinian minds, rather than feed them with the poison of hatred and violent ideology?