Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will take steps to help ensure that the Georg Eckert Institute review of Palestinian textbooks includes an assessment of compliance with UNESCO-derived standards of peace and tolerance in education.

The UK does not fund textbooks in the OPTs. The UK Government is concerned about allegations of incitement in the Palestinian Authority's (PA) curriculum. We have a regular dialogue with the PA in which we reiterate the need for both sides to prepare their populations for peaceful coexistence. We continue to urge the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to avoid engaging in, or encouraging, any type of action and language that makes it more difficult to achieve a culture of peaceful coexistence and a negotiated solution to the conflict.

The EU is also financing a study of Palestinian textbooks against defined benchmarks (based on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation standards on peace, tolerance and non-violence in education). This review is currently underway. We have regular discussions with our European Partners on the review and we continue to encourage them to finalise the report as soon as possible. The UK will continue to raise our concerns about incitement in education, and Foreign Secretary raised this issue with the PA during his visit to the OPTs in August 2020.