PA blames Israel-based educational research body for £1.6m EU funding freeze

The EU has frozen more than two million euros’ worth of funding to the Palestinian Authority because of the PA’s refusal to clean its school textbooks of race hate and antisemitism — and the PA has put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the educational research body, Israel-based IMPACT-se.

Riyad al-Maliki, the PA foreign minister, told the Voice of Palestine radio station that the aid had been frozen since early 2021.

But he complained that “there is a problem of conditionality which we are working to address. These conditions focus on reforming the school curriculum as a prerequisite for funds flowing in.”

Al-Maliki was speaking ahead of a projected visit next week by the EU Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, whose department oversees all aid to the PA.

In trenchant remarks, the Palestinian leader said that the PA “rejected” the aid for reform condition, and said that would be made clear to the commissioner during his visit.

In a variety of media articles in the past week, PA politicians have blamed IMPACT-se for the freeze in funds.

The curriculum head of the Ministry of Education, Tharwat Zaid, was truculent, citing Palestinian terrorists who appear in the textbooks as “heroes” and “martyrs”, to which the Palestinians, like any people, were entitled.

But Marcus Sheff, the British-born chief executive of IMPACT-se, commented: “The PA brazenly continues to produce antisemitic and violent textbooks, written and taught by EU-financed Palestinian civil servants… the PA does not seem inclined to offer the EU a way out.”