The European Union has been freezing aid to the Palestinian Authority for more than two years due to incitement to violence and anti-Semitism in PA textbooks. To the PA's official radio station, "Voice of Palestine".
According to al-Maliki, "Currently, the European Union is still blocking aid money to Palestine. There is no breakthrough in this matter. The EU is adamant in its position that the curriculum in schools should be amended before returning the aid money, which has been frozen for two years."
He stressed, however, that the authority will not change its policy or clear the inciting content from the textbooks of future generations.
“There is a problem of funding conditions that we are working to address.
These conditions focus on the reform of the school curriculum as a necessary condition for the flow of funds.
We reject the idea of conditioning in exchange for returning aid to Palestine. "
Incitement video on the Palestinian channel // Courtesy: nrg
The remarks came amid a visit by one of the top figures in the European Union, Oliver Verhali, to Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Verhali, the EU Commissioner for Neighborhoods and Enlargement, plays a key role in EU and Middle East relations.
His visit takes place with a low media profile, but yesterday he was scheduled with President Yitzhak Herzog and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
Today (Thursday), Verhali arrived in Ramallah, where he met with senior PA officials.
One of the major issues that is expected to arise in the meetings is the inciting content in the textbooks, which the Union has previously funded to publish.
About a year and a half ago, Israel Today published serious findings revealed by the Impact C Institute, which specializes in examining the contents of textbooks around the world.
Following the revelations, the union demanded that the Palestinians amend the textbooks, but the demand was denied.
At the end of long months of fruitless talks, Verhali decided to halt EU funding until a solution was found.
It should be emphasized, however, that this is not a decision in principle to stop helping the Palestinians, such as the one received by President Trump at the time, but rather the specific issue of helping to finance textbooks.
The staff of the IMPACT-se Institute briefed the senior officials of the Commissioner and Harley's office before his visit to Israel, on the lack of improvement in the inciting content and even on the aggravation of the situation.
Palestinian high school students in Hebron, archive (photographers have no connection to the article),
IMPACT-se Director General Marcus Chef told Israel Today that "After years of debate and legislation in Brussels, there is now too much opposition on the part of the European Parliament and the European Commission to transfer huge sums of money to the Palestinian Authority, while it continues to produce antisemitic and violent textbooks. Books written and studied by Palestinian Ministry of Education staff whose salaries are paid by the European Union.
It is clear that the EU does not want to stop funding aid altogether, but the authority vehemently refuses to make any changes to the textbooks according to the examples we have provided to the EU and the foreign ministries of its membership policies.
It seems that the PA does not tend to offer the EU another alternative. "
The institute's deputy director, Arik Agassi, added that "as a research institute that has been working for half a century with countries in the Middle East, including Israel, to introduce values of accepting the other peace and tolerance in textbooks, it is very unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is radicalizing educational content in the library.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and even Qatar recently have realized the power that textbooks have to be a barrier to youth radicalization and violence and regional stability.
These countries have recently removed extremely harsh anti-Semitic and jihadist content, which was uncovered by the IMPACT-se Institute which included inciting anti-Judaism content as a religion and direct calls for murder and violence.
The European Union understands this very well. "
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