Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of reports that a Palestinian Authority teacher recently gave 10-year-olds an online reading comprehension lesson glorifying the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.

The UK government is deeply concerned about allegations of incitement in the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum. ?We are pleased that the Palestinian Authority is undertaking a review of its textbooks and updating them for the new academic year.

The UK has been at the forefront of international action to get to the bottom of allegations. We secured agreement from European partners to commission the Georg Eckert Institute to conduct an independent review, which is currently underway. The scope of the Review was set before the COVID-19 crisis and it does not cover online teaching arrangements put in place by the Palestinian Authority while schools are closed. Any changes to its scope would be a matter for Georg Eckert Institute and our European Partners. We have not had specific discussions with our international counterparts on the Palestinian Authority’s online curriculum. Ministers have regularly raised the issue of incitement in the education sector with the PA’s Minister for Education,?which the Secretary of State did most recently in February this year.