How UK gives support for hate-filled PA education

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British taxpayers are continuing to pay for a Palestinian education system in which school pupils are routinely taught incitement, hatred of Israel and glorification of terrorism. Many of the textbooks are written by vetted officials, whose salaries are paid by the UK.

Despite numerous assurances from the Palestinian education minister, detailed reports from the Israel-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) show that as recently as September last year, Palestinian school students were still learning maths by adding up the number of ‘martyrs’, including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres. The curriculum is taught in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

Not only does Britain continue to pay – in the past five years it has spent an estimated £105 million on Palestinian education professionals, including on the salaries of teachers who write the textbooks – but it appears to have a blind spot when it comes to challenging the Palestinians on the content of those

The UK and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have a Memorandum of Understanding, or MoU, which supposedly commits the Palestinians not only to “uphold the principle of non-violence”, but to take action against “incitement to violence, including addressing allegations of incitement in the educational curriculum”.

Money paid by Britain to the Palestinian partner is supposedly contingent on the PA’s performance on “curriculum reform”.

However, the UK’s criteria for judging the PA’s performance appear narrow. It deemed an internal government target in the 2017-18 MoU for the PA to carry out “curriculum reform” was met, but then admitted it did not include the actual contents of the curriculum. 

In a letter written shortly before his resignation in March 2019, Alistair Burt, then Middle East Minister, said: “DfiD [Department for International Development] assessed that the PA did meet this KPI [key performance indicator] as the Grades 5-10 pilot textbooks were rolled out by the agreed deadline.” 

But he added: “The content of the textbooks was not covered by a KPI, and DfID was not involved in the selection of material.” 

Ministers have refused requests to publish the government’s annual internal reviews of the PA’s compliance with the MoU. However, they have repeatedly stated that, as Middle East Minister James Cleverly told Labour Friends of Israel chair Steve McCabe last November: “We continue to judge that the PA is demonstrating a credible commitment to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s partnership principles.” 

It is not the first time Cleverly or his predecessor, Burt, has responded in this way. LFI MPs Ian Austin and Joan Ryan, both of whom have now left Parliament, asked on four occasions what Britain was doing. Each time, the government said it judged the PA to be in compliance.  Britain insists that “UK aid does not pay for textbooks in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, a line critics call “civil service speak”.

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