The Diplomat
Fifteen EU countries, including Spain, have called on the EU to unblock financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, which has been halted by the European Commission as a pressure measure to modify Palestinian textbooks on the grounds that they incite hatred and violence against Israel.
“The Palestinian Authority is going through a difficult situation and is suffering a serious financial crisis, exacerbated by the inflation of oil and wheat prices as a result of the Russian war in Ukraine,” reads the letter, signed by the foreign ministers of Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.
Last autumn, at the proposal of the Hungarian Neighborhood Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, the Commission announced the suspension of financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and made its resumption conditional on reforming the Palestinian education system and modifying textbooks so as to promote coexistence, tolerance and education for peace with Israel, in line with the objectives of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian Ministry of Education has insisted that its curriculum is part of “national sovereignty and no one has the right to amend it.”
In the letter, the foreign ministers regret “the continued delay in the disbursement of EU financial assistance to Palestine for 2021 due to the Commission’s proposal to make funding conditional on education sector reform,” a proposal that “does not enjoy broad support” and may even “have the opposite effect of the aid’s intended purpose.” as it could “undermine, or even reverse the progress achieved to date” with the Palestinian Authority’s “ambitious education reform program” and could even negatively affect the EU’s ability to engage in dialogue with the Palestinian Authority and to “empower moderate sectors against more radical actors.”
The signatory ministers call for the funds to arrive “as soon as possible” because the financial crisis facing the Palestinian Authority due to the crisis in Ukraine and the inflation of oil and wheat resulting from the war prevents it from meeting its obligations to government employees, who have been receiving only 80% of their salaries for months.
The need to unblock this aid was addressed last Monday in Luxembourg by the Foreign Ministers to the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, and the issue has been raised to the European Commission, according to diplomatic sources informed the Europa Press agency.
