Textbooks in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Textbook debates in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict concern both curricular content and the methods used to assess it. Reviews differ in sample, period, school stream, subject, and analytical standard; findings about national narratives, maps, peace education, incitement, and violence therefore require attribution to the body that made them.[1][2]

The development of Palestinian curricula followed several changes in educational administration. After 1948, schools in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — used Jordan’s curriculum, while schools in Gaza used Egypt’s. From 1967 until the 1993 Declaration of Principles, Israel retained overall control of education in the territories while maintaining those curricula with minimal changes, according to a 2006 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.[1] The report traces early Palestinian curriculum development to private schools in Ramallah in 1986 and the establishment of the Palestinian Curriculum Development Center in 1994. In 1995, the Palestinian Ministry of Education adopted a curriculum developed with UNESCO.[1]

The Palestinian Ministry began releasing new textbooks in 1999, using a phased schedule intended to give the curriculum-development center time to study their effects on pupils and teachers. Textbooks for grades 1 and 6 were scheduled for 2000, with materials for grade 12 following in 2006; the CRS report expected the full grades 1–12 curriculum to be available that year.[1] It placed this reform effort in the context of the 1993 Declaration of Principles, which called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to foster mutual understanding and tolerance, refrain from hostile propaganda, and take steps to prevent incitement.[1]

The development and revision of schoolbooks became a recurring source of disagreement over Palestinian national identity and unresolved political questions. The CRS review found that observers disputed whether Palestinian textbooks fulfilled the Declaration’s educational aims, and that published studies differed both in method and conclusion.[1] The arguments have continued across later curriculum reviews, with parties disagreeing over how to distinguish national history and political opposition from delegitimization, incitement, or advocacy of violence.[2][3]

A 2016 IMPACT-se review examined 123 Ministry of Education-approved or recommended textbooks for grades 7–12 in Jewish state and state-religious schools. The subjects included history, civics, geography, Jewish heritage and religious studies, Hebrew language and literature, and Arabic for Jewish-Israeli students. The report describes its coverage as academic years 2000–2017, although it is titled a 2016 update. It excluded Haredi schools and state Arab and Druze curricula, and assessed the books using the organization’s UNESCO-derived standards for peace and tolerance.[2]

Under those standards, IMPACT-se reported that the sampled Israeli textbooks presented peace with Palestinians as desirable and achievable, acknowledged Palestinian presence before 1948 and the development of Palestinian national identity, and included Palestinian perspectives and accounts of suffering.[2] It also described maps showing Palestinian localities, sometimes marking the Green Line or areas associated with the Oslo Accords.[2] A distinctive passage quoted in the report reads: “Peace that we all want/always peace, not battle, not fire. Therefore, we all aspire: Let there be peace upon Israel!” The report identifies this as an excerpt from a particular schoolbook, not as a statement of policy applying to every school or textbook.[2]

The report also identified limitations in its positive assessment. It said that accounts by Palestinians after 1948 were relatively rare when they concerned Palestinians who were not Israeli citizens, and that some books cast Israel and Jews chiefly as victims responding to Arab or Palestinian hostility.[2] It found that peace could be presented as an ideal while wars were described as necessary for survival; sampled textbooks also included Israeli disagreements over territorial withdrawal and peace negotiations.[2] The findings concern a defined sample and educational sector, rather than all Israeli curricula.[2]

A later IMPACT-se study analyzed 107 Hebrew-language textbooks used in state and state-religious schools for 2022–23. Its subjects included civics, geography, history, Hebrew studies, and Jewish thought. The sample included all eight state-approved civics textbooks and most modern-history textbooks addressing the Arab–Israeli conflict. The two school streams were described as representing 74% of Hebrew-language students; Haredi and Arabic-language curricula were not included.[3] The study drew on a Ministry corpus of about 3,600 authorized textbooks.[3]

IMPACT-se concluded that the sampled books taught peace and dialogue as preferred ways of resolving disputes, described negotiations and agreements including the Oslo Accords, and offered multiple perspectives on contentious issues. It reported discussion of Palestinian identity and the Nakba, including displacement during the War of Independence, as well as Israeli violence and injustice, with Deir Yassin and the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre among the examples.[3] The report focused on attitudes toward Arabs and Palestinians, not the entirety of the curricula.[3]

The 2022–23 report also examined maps. It said maps often marked the Green Line, Palestinian localities, and Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, but represented the West Bank inconsistently. Some showed Areas A and B, some only Area A, and others omitted the Green Line or failed to distinguish Israeli from Palestinian-controlled territory. The report cautioned that some maps were old or factually incorrect.[3]

Other accounts have described curricular inclusion of Palestinian experiences in particular Israeli materials. A 2018 review of dozens of books in state and state-religious schools reported that a fourth-grade civics text recognized the identity and narrative of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and that a history book discussed the term Nakba and Palestinian accounts of 1948. It described a civics textbook as saying Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the War of Independence and that the Nakba devastated Palestinian society, leaving most of its residents refugees.[4]

The same review cited lessons asking students to consider the case of a sick Palestinian delayed at an Israeli checkpoint and passages on Kafr Qasim stating that civilians were killed without provocation and those responsible were not adequately punished. It reported that some texts called the Irgun and Lehi terrorist organizations, described the 1948 Deir Yassin killings as a massacre, or condemned reprisal actions as immoral when civilians were harmed. The review said peace and nonviolence were generally presented as desirable, sometimes with conditions attached to a peace process in newer textbooks.[4]

Reviews of Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks have produced sharply different evaluations. A 2006 CRS survey of studies recorded claims that Palestinian books fostered violence, privileged martyrdom and jihad over peace, and failed to acknowledge Israel. Other analysts described the curriculum as progress toward a Palestinian national education system and argued that it did not incite anti-Jewish violence or constitute a “war curriculum.” CRS emphasized that the studies it reviewed used different methods and reached different conclusions.[1]

That review summarized concerns about limited or inconsistent treatment of Israel, Israelis, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, and about selective accounts of history and geography. Studies also disagreed over the significance of maps that omitted Israel. Some saw omission as a political signal; an analysis by Nathan Brown, as summarized by CRS, held that historical or topographical maps often avoided political boundaries and that omissions reflected unresolved political questions.[1] Researchers likewise disagreed about references to jihad, sacrifice, and martyrdom. Some interpreted them in the political context as directed against Israel, while others placed them in religious or historical contexts and argued that the curriculum did not openly support terrorism. CRS noted that the curriculum included general teaching about peace and tolerance, while studies questioned whether it explicitly addressed coexistence with Israel.[1]

A report by Dr. Arnon Groiss, published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), examined PA schoolbooks published from 2013 to 2020 and nearly 400 textbooks and more than 100 teacher guides, most of the guides published in 2018. It described the books as used in the West Bank, Gaza, and most East Jerusalem schools, and as mandatory in Palestinian private schools and UNRWA-operated schools.[5] Groiss characterized the material as delegitimizing Israel and Jewish ties to the land, demonizing Israel and Jews, and promoting violent struggle rather than peace or coexistence. He further argued that, from 2016, the sampled books increasingly denied Jewish history in the land and more often substituted “the Zionist occupation” for “Israel.” These are the report author’s interpretations, not a consensus finding established by the report page.[5]

The ITIC report illustrates its argument with examples from different subjects. One was a 2019 third-grade social-studies passage describing Jerusalem as an Arab city and holy to Muslims and Christians. Another was a 2018 grade-eleven mathematics exercise asking how many of ten Palestinian cars a settler might hit if each shot had a stated probability of 0.7; the report says the teacher’s guide gives the answer as seven.[5] The report presents these examples as evidence of its broader claims about Jewish connections to the land and conflict-related violence appearing in school subjects.[5]

The European Union-commissioned Georg Eckert Institute review of Palestinian curricula from 2017 and 2019 was summarized by the U.S. State Department as finding both elements of reform and continuing problems. Its account says the review found promotion of UNESCO standards, including human rights, pluralism, peace, tolerance, and nonviolence, and removal of some previously identified inciteful material. It also identified antagonism toward Israel, glorification of violence, antisemitic references, negative stereotypes of Jews, and language delegitimizing Israel.[6] The State Department’s 2022 human-rights account described the review as covering a sample of 156 textbooks and reported a strong human-rights focus alongside a narrative of resistance, selections questioning Israel’s legitimacy, antisemitic content, and praise for Palestinians who committed violent attacks.[7]

IMPACT-se criticized the Georg Eckert review, saying it omitted or excused antisemitism and violence. The organization separately assessed newer Palestinian textbooks as moving further from UNESCO standards and containing violence, martyrdom, and jihad across subjects and grades.[6] These are IMPACT-se’s assessments as relayed in the State Department report, not conclusions independently established there.[6] A Knesset Research and Information Center abstract likewise described the Georg Eckert findings as complex: the review identified a resistance narrative and hostility toward Israel, with particularly emotionally charged descriptions of Israeli violence in Arabic-language textbooks.[8]

A 2025–2026 IMPACT-se executive summary, reproduced by the Jewish Virtual Library, says the organization reviewed 290 textbooks and 71 teacher guides for grades 1–12. It characterizes the curriculum as unreformed and reports antisemitic content, praise of violence and martyrdom, omission of Israel from maps and texts, and rejection of coexistence. It also says early-grade and grade-twelve books remained unchanged despite reform commitments. The summary does not supply detailed methods or counterarguments, so its findings should be understood as the organization’s characterization of its review.[9]

A news account of that review reported 210 examples IMPACT-se considered problematic and said that books for grades 1–4 and 12, expected to be updated, had not undergone significant changes. Examples attributed to the review included a first-grade Arabic exercise using the word “shaheed,” or martyr; a second-grade poem invoking revolution and Haifa, Jaffa, al-Aqsa, and the Dome of the Rock; and maps showing “Palestine” between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea or omitting Israel.[10] Other examples included a third-grade mathematics problem counting people described as martyrs killed in Gaza in 2014, a tenth-grade science problem using a girl firing a stone from a slingshot to teach Newton’s laws, and teacher-guide material the report characterized as related to armed resistance. An eighth-grade Arabic guide reportedly described Zionism as “modern terrorism.” These examples and labels are reported findings attributed to the review, not independent assessments of every PA textbook.[10]

UNRWA uses host-government curricula and textbooks; in the West Bank and Gaza its schools use PA textbooks. A U.S. Government Accountability Office review examined selected PA textbooks for grades 1–10 issued in 2016 and 2017, as well as English-language textbooks published from 2011 to 2014. It did not cover every material used in the schools.[11] GAO reported that UNRWA reviewed 111 textbooks comprising 11,761 pages across three sessions. In the first semester of 2017–18 review, it identified 203 issues on 229 of 7,498 pages, or 3.1% of pages. Most issues were categorized as neutrality or bias concerns, and UNRWA reported no cases of incitement to violence in those grades in that review.[11]

GAO also reported that UNRWA developed complementary materials to address content it considered inconsistent with UN values, but had not, at the time covered, trained teachers or distributed those materials to classrooms for use. UNRWA told GAO it lacked authority to change PA textbooks.[11] A later State Department report described UNRWA as reviewing new books for alignment with UN values and training teachers to address material it considered inconsistent with those values or UNESCO standards through critical thinking. It also recorded UNRWA’s statement that it had zero tolerance for hate speech and incitement and investigated allegations.[12] These reports describe different review periods and should not be conflated into a single account of UNRWA practice.[11][12]

Textbooks in East Jerusalem have been subject to a distinct review and editing process. The State Department reported that the Jerusalem Education Administration, a joint municipal and Israeli Ministry of Education body, had jurisdiction over textbooks used there. A committee reviewed and edited PA books to remove material it considered antisemitic or inciting violence against Israel, and the Israeli Education Ministry required schools to use edited books.[12] Israeli officials cited concerns about antisemitism and incitement; Palestinians and PA officials argued that edits removed or obscured Palestinian identity, history, and national aspirations, including flags, images of Palestinian leaders, and material about the right of return.[12]

The dispute produced school and community protests. In its account of 2022 events, the State Department said Israel’s education minister announced conditional one-year licenses for six East Jerusalem schools serving more than 2,000 children, requiring curriculum changes or risking loss of their licenses. The ministry said the books included, among other things, glorification of prisoners and armed struggle and claims about Israeli responsibility for water shortages and killings. Palestinian parent and teacher bodies organized a strike in protest, describing the policy as textbook censorship and the imposition of an Israeli curriculum.[13]

The U.S. State Department’s report covering June 2024 to May 2025 described the 2021 Georg Eckert assessment as the latest comprehensive international assessment of Palestinian textbooks. It said the review found a strong focus on human rights as well as a pronounced resistance narrative toward Israel; some selections questioned Israel’s legitimacy, contained antisemitic material, or praised Palestinians who carried out violent attacks. The report said the PA prime minister announced a curriculum modernization project in April 2024, beginning with grade 12. Those books were updated and expected for public-school use in 2025–26, while books for other grades were still being revised; some private schools said they would wait until at least 2026–27 before adopting the updated curriculum.[14]

A bilateral study of Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks, initiated by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land and funded by the U.S. State Department, was conducted by Sami Adwan, Daniel Bar-Tal, and Bruce Wexler. The researchers examined books in history, languages, geography, social studies, civics, and religion, asking how each community represented itself and the other.[15] The study’s samples included Israeli state-school and independent ultra-Orthodox books, while most Palestinian selections came from the PA Ministry of Education, with some from independent Palestinian schools.[16]

As reported in 2013, the study found that explicit demonization and dehumanization were rare in both groups of textbooks, but that both presented one-sided national narratives. Books tended to portray the other community as an enemy whose actions harmed the self-group, while depicting one’s own actions positively, often as self-defense or as efforts to achieve peace. They selected historical events in ways that supported each national narrative and included little information about the other side’s religion, culture, economy, daily life, or even its presence on maps.[16] A summary of the study said these patterns occurred predominantly in Palestinian or ultra-Orthodox Jewish textbooks in its quantitative comparison.[17]

The reported statistics included the finding that 75% of Israeli and 81% of Palestinian books characterized the opposing community as the enemy. Positive or very positive self-references appeared in 54% of references in Israeli state textbooks and 85% in Palestinian books. The study described state-school Israeli books as providing more substantive information about Palestinian society and as including more examples of Israeli actions against Palestinians that Israeli leaders and citizens had criticized; it characterized ultra-Orthodox Israeli books as more similar to Palestinian books in imbalance and lack of self-criticism.[15] A separate news account reported that 96% of maps in Palestinian books either did not show the Green Line or showed it while still describing the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean as “Palestine.” For Israeli books, it reported that 76% showed no line between Israel and Palestinian territories, 11% showed a line without naming Palestinian territories, and 13% identified areas belonging to the PA under the Oslo agreements.[15]

The study’s findings and methods were disputed. Israel’s Education Ministry called the work biased, unprofessional, and nonobjective and rejected the comparison; the Anti-Defamation League also criticized it as distorted and counterproductive. Bruce Wexler rejected allegations that the study was one-sided. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad welcomed the finding that the books did not contain what he called blatant incitement based on contempt for the other, and said he had asked the education ministry to consider the findings.[15][16] The study’s authors proposed a committee of officials and international experts from both education ministries to review existing and future textbooks and develop an action plan, with similar processes for ultra-Orthodox Israeli books.[16]

Several educational projects have experimented with presenting narratives side by side rather than resolving them into a single account. The 2013 book Side-by-Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine, authored by Israeli and Palestinian historians, presented the two narratives alongside each other. According to IMPACT-se’s account, each side drafted its own material without modification or persuasion by the other; the project did not produce a shared narrative or a dialogue-based history, and the book was not included in the Israeli curricula studied in 2022–23.[3]

A 2009 article describes a separate project in which Israeli and Palestinian teachers developed a dual-narrative history text and tested it in classrooms on both sides, exposing pupils to the other community’s interpretation of key events. Its authors argued that creating and teaching such a book could enable teachers to play a productive role in violent political conflicts, while discussing practical and pedagogical challenges.[18] A 2010 editorial described a format developed by six Israeli and six Palestinian history teachers through the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East: the Israeli account appeared on one page and the Palestinian account opposite, with space between for students’ reflections. The editorial said schools in Jericho and Ramallah had reportedly agreed to use it and a Sha’ar Hanegev high school offered it in an elective enriched-history course; the editorial also criticized some historical claims in the book.[19]

A 2024 account of teaching the conflict with Side by Side described contrasting interpretations of the November 1947 UN partition vote: an Israeli account emphasizing legitimacy and Jewish self-determination, and a Palestinian account viewing the vote as a colonial division of land. The course presented 1948 through both the Israeli term War of Independence and the Palestinian term Nakba. Its author argued that acknowledging Palestinian displacement and the war’s liberatory meaning for Jews need not erase either part of the history.[20]

Textbooks are significant because they transmit national history, civic values, and understandings of the other community to successive generations. CRS described education reform as relevant to the peace process, democratic governance, and U.S. assistance, while later reviews treated curricular content as a measure of tolerance, recognition, and coexistence.[1][6]

Because PA textbooks are also used in UNRWA schools and are reviewed or edited in East Jerusalem, disputes over their content affect donor oversight, teacher training, school licensing, and curriculum policy beyond the classroom.[11][12]

Textbook disputes concern not only what is printed, but also which analytical standards are used to judge it. The CRS review documented disagreement about whether references to jihad, martyrdom, and sacrifice signal political hostility or occur within religious and historical teaching; it also recorded conflicting readings of maps and the treatment of Israel and Jewish history.[1] Later reviews likewise differed: the Georg Eckert assessment, as summarized by the State Department, identified both UNESCO-aligned human-rights content and troubling material, while IMPACT-se characterized the curriculum more negatively.[6][7] Reports based on different samples, school systems, dates, and methods cannot be treated as a controlled comparison.[2][3]

The 2013 bilateral study also prompted sharply different reactions, and its reported findings should be read with the methodological dispute in view. The study said dehumanization was rare and found shared tendencies toward one-sided national narratives; critics challenged its framing, while its presenter defended it.[15][16] Other cited summaries say the patterns were more pronounced in Palestinian and ultra-Orthodox Jewish books, illustrating that a broad claim about “Israeli” or “Palestinian” textbooks can conceal important differences among school sectors.[17][15]

Within Israel, the teaching of the Palestinian narrative has itself been debated. In 2007 the Education Ministry approved Living Together in Israel, a third-grade geography textbook for Arab schools that presented Israeli and Palestinian accounts of the War of Independence. It stated that some Arab residents were displaced and became refugees and that Israel expropriated Arab land, while also noting that Arab leaders rejected the UN partition plan and Jewish leaders accepted it. Education Minister Yuli Tamir said including the Nakba allowed Arab pupils to encounter their own story alongside the broader curriculum; a national geography supervisor described the goal as shared materials and a sense of belonging.[21]

The book’s dual account drew political criticism. Avigdor Lieberman, Zevulun Orlev, and Limor Livnat argued that including the Palestinian account was anti-Zionist or could encourage opposition to Israel. Ahmad Tibi argued that Palestinian history should also be taught in Jewish schools, while Zehava Gal-On supported teaching it as a step toward recognition and compromise.[22] An academic article from 2022 likewise characterized teaching Jewish Israeli students about the Nakba as contentious, arguing that it was suppressed in Israeli history and citizenship education and advocating inquiry-based teaching of controversial issues.[23] A 2008 Lookstein Center article said debate about teaching the Arab side of the conflict in Israeli schools had been underway for decades, dating at least to 1969. Although its focus was Diaspora Jewish day schools, it recommended teaching Palestinian and Arab perspectives in Israel studies, showing how different communities interpret shared events, and avoiding a polemical “myths and facts” approach.[24]

Maps and borders have been another point of dispute in Israeli education. Historian Derek J. Penslar wrote in 2008 that Israeli textbooks often omitted the Green Line and included the West Bank in maps of Israel. He reported that Education Minister Yuli Tamir had declared in December 2006 that future textbooks should depict the Green Line and that the Education Ministry was asked to implement a high-school curriculum on Israel’s borders. Penslar said the proposal drew strong protest from the Israeli right; Tamir framed it as a way to help students understand when and how Israel assumed control of territories where its population lived.[25] Later IMPACT-se reports found that maps in the sampled Israeli books often showed the Green Line and Palestinian areas, but inconsistently; the changing findings refer to different years and samples.[2][3]

Debates over PA textbooks have also included competing assessments of whether problematic content amounts to incitement. A U.S. government-funded IPCRI review, as summarized in a State Department report, concluded that revised PA textbooks did not cross the line into incitement, while still containing imbalance, bias, and inaccuracy. Critics separately argued that the books often ignored historical Jewish connections to Israel and Jerusalem.[26] A Knesset research abstract says the PA rejects allegations of inciteful content, arguing that studies making them are biased and rely on incorrect interpretations.[8]

The State Department’s account of the Georg Eckert review and the subsequent criticism of it also capture this divide: the review identified both promotion of UNESCO standards and continuing problems, while IMPACT-se said the review omitted or excused antisemitism and violence.[6] The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s narrower review reported that UNRWA identified neutrality or bias issues on 3.1% of reviewed pages in one group of books and no incitement to violence in the grades reviewed, illustrating how findings can vary with the scope and question of a review.[11] These results do not settle assessments of other books, grades, periods, or review criteria.[11]

East Jerusalem edits expose a related conflict between curriculum oversight and national identity. Israeli authorities have presented editing as a measure against antisemitism and incitement; Palestinians and PA officials have said changes erase Palestinian history and political aspirations.[12] The 2022 dispute over conditional licenses and the parents’ and teachers’ strike made the competing claims concrete: officials cited content they regarded as glorifying armed struggle, while protesters saw censorship and imposed curriculum.[13] The accounts are reported claims by the parties and the State Department, not a resolution of the underlying disagreement.[12][13]