Saudi Arabia removes “Palestine” from maps in its school curricula

SANAA, May 29 (YPA) – The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has removed “Palestine” from maps in a number of textbooks, leaving the space empty.

This comes amid increasing talk about the approaching Israeli normalization with Riyadh, which will force it to recognize the “State of Israel” in most of the occupied territories and include this in its curricula.

According to a close study of the Saudi curricula in 2023-2024, significant changes have emerged from the curricula that students studied in 2022-2023.

Words considered “hostile to Israel” were removed from several places in the curriculum, especially words such as “the enemy” and “the Zionist enemy,” and a large portion of the academic content that warned of Israeli ambitions in the region and efforts to expel the Palestinians from their land was removed.

The survey was carried out by the ‘IMPACT-se Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education,’ an Israeli civil society research organization that monitors and analyzes education materials around the world.

According to how it defines itself, the institute applies international peace standards derived from the declarations and resolutions of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Those in charge of the institute say that it aims to “prevent the extremism of children and youth” and examines educational curricula from the first grade of primary school until the secondary stage.

YPA