One of the most amazing things about the Oslo peace process is that since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the ministers of education of Israel and the PA have never met. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will meet with President Mahmoud Abbas. Defense Minister Ehud Barak will continue to meet with PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad. Other Israeli and PA ministers will continue to meet, but the ministers of education - no meetings will take place between them.
Former education minister Yuli Tamir was more than willing to meet her PA counterpart, Dr. Lamis Alami. But Alami replied that she is serving in a technocrat government whose job is to make sure that the educational system is working, not to get into matters of a controversial nature, such as curriculum content. Even peace-minded Fayad was approached to assist in arranging a meeting, but no progress took place.
Former PA minister of education Naim Abu Hummous told me, as I was leaving a meeting with Yasser Arafat where I raised the issue of peace education, that the issue of Palestinian textbooks and how they present Israel is a matter in the hands of the PA president, not the minister of education.
It is important to note that the issue of Palestinian textbooks has been highly exaggerated. The textbooks are more problematic in what they do not contain rather than how they actually present Israel, Jews, history, maps, etc. From this standpoint, Israeli textbooks are not much better.
