Palestinian Territories Archives - IMPACT-se

Analysing UNRWA’s Response to the UN Independent Review (Colonna Report)

dori — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:58:27 +0000

This IMPACT-se report examines the extent to which UNRWA has implemented the recommendations of the independent United Nations review, conducted by former-French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna following allegations concerning the agency's neutrality and links to terrorist organisations. Drawing on UNRWA's quarterly progress reports, funding requests, public statements, policy documents, and educational materials published between April 2024 and May 2026, the analysis finds limited evidence of meaningful implementation or deep institutional reform, raising questions about the agency's commitment to addressing the review's recommendations.

Read the full report here.

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Review of the 2025-2026 Palestinian Authority School Curriculum

adminimpact — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our comprehensive review of the Palestinian Authority’s 2025–26 national school curriculum, analyzes 290 textbooks and 71 teacher guides used in West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem schools (including UNRWA). The study finds the materials substantively unchanged from prior editions and documents recurring patterns across subjects: promotion of jihad and martyrdom, glorification of terrorism, incitement of antisemitism, rejection of peacemaking and the two-state solution, and erasure of Israel from maps.The report notes these themes across subjects, including science and math textbooks, in which violence is normalized. Meanwhile, language exercises and teacher guides include narratives that idealize armed struggle and present historical figures who perpetrated deadly attacks on civilians as role models. Overall, the findings provide an evidence-based portrait of the current curriculum’s content, themes, and classroom guidance.

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Back to School: Gaza’s Educational Frameworks in the Shadow of War

adminimpact — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) newly introduced “abridged curriculum” for Gaza condenses the same radical, antisemitic, and violence-promoting content that has long characterized its textbooks. This report by IMPACT-se examines the new educational material, revealing that far from fostering an environment of peace and coexistence, the PA’s abridged textbooks continue to glorify terrorism, incite hatred, and erase Israel from maps. The abridged curriculum was introduced as part of a remote-learning initiative following the war in Gaza, allowing students to complete two academic years in one. However, despite this restructuring, the educational materials remain largely unchanged in substance, perpetuating incitement and failing to meet the standards of peace, tolerance, and mutual respect set by UNESCO. IMPACT-se’s latest report provides a detailed analysis of the content in Gaza’s newly condensed textbooks, along with an assessment of the educational environment in reopened schools. The findings highlight that radicalization is still deeply embedded in Palestinian education, contradicting repeated assurances by the PA that it is working toward reform.

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Review of UNRWA Schools Headed by Hamas Principals

adminimpact — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 10:50:00 +0000

This report presents an updated review of educational activities organized by UNRWA schools in Gaza, whose administrative officials were recently identified as Hamas military operatives. This link to Hamas is based on new intelligence collected by Israel since October 7th, which identified twelve UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip holding senior positions (schools principals, deputies, directors and deputy directors of training centers) as members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.1 The intelligence shows that over 10% of the 510 employees in UNRWA's education system in the Gaza Strip, who hold senior positions, are members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which are designated terror organizations. Two of the Hamas-member UNRWA employees were principals of schools under which Hamas tunnels were built, as revealed by UNRWA itself: Al-Maghazi Boys Preparatory School B, and Al-Zaytun Boys Preparatory School A. The document contains examples from these schools, originally published in our previous March 2023 report,2 and new examples from other schools based on an initial review of their material.

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UNRWA Education: Textbooks and Terror—November 2023

adminimpact — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With this damning report, documenting support for the October 7 Massacre among UNRWA teachers and other staff members, IMPACT-se uncovers evidence of the connection between the content of textbooks taught in UNRWA schools and the atrocities committed on October 7, reflecting years of hate-teaching in these schools. The report shows that to date, at least fourteen teachers and staff at UNRWA schools have publicly celebrated the October 7 massacre and other Hamas attacks on their social media accounts. One UNRWA teacher in the school system in Gaza, Sarah Alderawy, posted a video clip on the day of the massacre showing Hamas terrorists roaming the Israeli streets with rifles while shooting at Israeli cars and rocket attacks in Israel. Over half of Gazan school students attend UNRWA schools. The report further reveals that at least 100 Hamas members committing the terror attacks are graduates of UNRWA’s education system, whose textbooks include content that encourages antisemitism, glorifies violence and promotes militant jihad.

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Review of 2023 Palestinian Matriculation Exams

adminimpact — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:37:00 +0000

This review examines the Palestinian matriculation exams, known as the General Certificate of Secondary Education Examination in Palestine (Tawjihi, or Injaz) for June 2023. The Tawjihi examinations are the culmination of the 12-year Palestinian education system. The exams not only cover the material taught in twelfth-grade Palestinian curriculum textbooks, but highlight aspects of the curriculum which are deemed worthy of special attention. The tests are a good indicator of the elements of the curriculum which are considered particularly important. They implicitly reveal the fundamental goals of the educational system, and the worldview and identity students are equipped with to play a role in Palestinian society. Given that the Tawjihi exams reflect the PA's educational policy and future outlook, they deserve close scrutiny.

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UNRWA Education: Reform or Regression

adminimpact — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A joint IMPACT-se/United Nations Watch report, concerning incitement to hate and violence by UNRWA teachers andschools,is being presented on Tuesday, March 14 to Congress. The report uncovers 47 new cases of incitement by UNRWA staff, in breach of the agency’s stated policies of zero tolerance for racism, discrimination, or antisemitism in its schools and educational materials. Teachers and schools at the UN agency that runs education and social services for Palestinians regularly call for the murder of Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite antisemitism. The report captures evidence taken from inside UNRWA classrooms, showing the teaching of these materials, and revealing how UNRWA’s own content directs students to study specific hateful passages in Palestinian textbooks—which the organization claims teachers are told to skip. The findings also contradict statements and promises made very recently by UNRWA to donor nations and were also submitted to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield; EU Commissioner Joseph Borell; German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz; UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.

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Statement on UNRWA’s Response to IMPACT-se Report

adminimpact — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

UNRWA’s latest statement on our joint report with UN Watch, which reviewed institutional UNRWA- branded teaching materials self-produced by the agency’s education departments and schools, does not question the facts of the report. Instead, UNRWA again reverts to vilifying IMPACT-se, after being warned by European parliament members to desist from these unsubstantiated and ad hominem attacks. Complete Article HERE

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UNRWA’s latest statement 2022

adminimpact — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In respect to UNRWA’s latest statement on our report reviewing UNRWA-branded school materials, labeled for use in 2022, below is an executive summary. Given that UNRWA chose to reach out in its statement to IMPACT-se for guidance on the reviewed material, we felt compelled to provide additional information.

Although not within the scope of our research, a cursory inspection of UNRWA school social media accounts reveals that UNRWA-branded materials in our report, in violation of UN values, are, in fact, used in the UNRWA schools.

This is despite UNRWA’s absolute denial that problematic UNRWA-produced teaching materials were “authorized for use in any UNRWA school,” claiming that identified materials were from an unnamed, private commercial website, which illegally utilized the agency’s logo and names of employees.

The UNRWA-branded material analyzed in the report includes 590 pages, in 30 documents, across at least four freely available open-source platforms, spanning six separate grades. They all bear the UNRWA logo or its name in Arabic. The materials list UNRWA staff, six of whom are supervisors and inspectors, as well as 49 teachers affiliated with over 30 UNRWA schools in three verified UNRWA school districts, who helped to write and supervise the documents in question.

Read Complete Response HERE

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Review of 2022 UNRWA-Produced Study Materials in the Palestinian Territories

adminimpact — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 10:53:00 +0000

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) operates in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, as well as in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. It reportedly provides education to 533,000 children in its schools.1 According to UNWRA’s website, education alone takes up 58 percent of the organization’s budget.2

Under its mandate, UNRWA schools teach the curriculum and textbooks of the “host country,” UNRWA does not produce its own curricula.3 The Palestinian National Authority (PA) curriculum is taught in the 370 UNRWA-run schools across the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Jerusalem, educating over 320,000 students as of 2019, according to UNRWA’s data.4

Along with other school curricula across the MENA region, IMPACT-se has been analyzing the PA school curriculum used by UNRWA for over two decades, assessing compliance with UN values, such as tolerance, non-violence, and peace-making. Most recently, reports and updates have been published annually since the Palestinian curriculum reform in 2016 and are freely available on IMPACT-se’s website (www.impact-se.org). Our extensive research of PA school textbooks has consistently shown a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom, overt antisemitism, and jihad across all grades and subjects, with the proliferation of extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies throughout the curriculum, including science and math textbooks; rejection of the possibility of peace with Israel; and the complete omission of any historical Jewish presence in the modern-day territories of Israel and the PA.5

This material is taught in UNRWA schools throughout the Palestinian Territories. Since its establishment, UNRWA has used the curriculum of the “host country” in which it operates. In the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, UNRWA uses the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority (PA). UNRWA officially claims that it “has no mandate to alter any host government curriculum or textbooks which are a matter of national sovereignty,” including those of the Palestinian Authority.6

As such, UNRWA acknowledges that students are exposed at any given moment to all the content existing in hard copy Palestinian Authority textbooks provided by UNRWA to students used either at school or at home as it does not alter the materials.

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