IMPACT-se Report - Back to School:
Gaza's Educational Frameworks in the Shadow of War

In a March 2025 IMPACT-se report, it was revealed that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) new educational initiative for Gaza, launched in February 2025, includes an ‘abridged curriculum’ aimed at addressing two years of educational disruption. Despite the PA’s pledge to reform its content to meet UNESCO’s standards of peace and tolerance, the report documents that the new materials still contain anti-Semitic content and incite violence. This contradicts the PA’s commitments and the European Union’s funding conditions, as over 380 million Euros have been allocated for educational reform. The report highlights ongoing radicalization in schools, with materials that glorify terrorism and martyrdom, undermining efforts toward peace and reconciliation.

Below is an executive summary of the report. For the full report, click here.

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The 2024-2025 academic year in Gaza officially began on February 23, 2025, as announced by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education. In response to nearly two years of educational disruption due to war, the PA introduced a new educational initiative alongside efforts to reopen physical schools.

At the heart of this initiative is a newly created ‘abridged curriculum’—a condensed version of existing PA textbooks, presented as remote-learning educational packages designed specifically for Gaza students to complete two academic years in one.

This moment provided an ideal opportunity for the PA to conduct its long-awaited revision of its curriculum, aligning it with the commitments it made to the European Union (EU) in July 2024—pledging to reform its educational content in full adherence to UNESCO’s standards of peace and tolerance. However, this research shows that these newly created materials contain antisemitic content that encourages students to acts of violence, justified on both nationalistic and religious grounds, as has been documented many times in PA textbooks.

The European Union has provided the PA with over 380 million Euros since signing the Letter of Intent in July 2024. This funding was intended to be subject to progress in the PA’s overall reform agenda, with the education sector identified as a key area for change.

The EU’s financial support was distributed in tranches, contingent on continued steps toward reform. These findings indicate that incitement to violence has not been eliminated from textbooks and that the PA’s curriculum content remains a central vehicle to radicalize children in Gaza.

The study detailed in this report presents two key findings:

1. The PA’s new “abridged curriculum” for Gaza replicates antisemitic material and content that incites to hatreds and violence.

   • The PA has retained content containing antisemitism, glorification and justification of violence and terrorism, encouragement of martyrdom and jihad, dehumanization and demonization of Israel, and the erasure of Israel from maps.

   • These newly produced materials mirror the problematic content of standard PA textbooks, contradicting the PA’s public commitment to educational reform and contravening the conditions under which EU funding was released.

2. Reopened schools in Gaza continue to use textbooks and teaching materials that incite hatred and violence.

   • Alongside the PA’s remote-learning initiative, classrooms have reopened using both older PA textbooks and additional classroom materials.

   • Documented blackboard notations, classroom posters, and graffiti openly glorify terrorism, celebrate the October 2023 massacres and honour Hamas terrorist figures killed in the war. Documented evidence from these classrooms confirms that incitement remains a core pillar of Palestinian education in Gaza, despite the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis.

   • In newly established temporary schools, indoctrination extends beyond textbooks into school ceremonies and cultural activities. Young female students have been documented performing a dance that supports violence, chanting “We ignited the Intifada, with a stone and a knife” while making throat-slitting gestures.