The present research deals with some 115 maps of the country appearing in the latest edition of schoolbooks issued by the Palestinian Authority in 2020 (few books were issued earlier and have not been revised since then) and used in the PA schools, including UNRWA schools. Its source material included 125 books of grades 1-10 in the subjects of Arabic, English, Social Studies (including Geography and History), Islamic Education, Mathematics, Sciences and Technology.
The research aimed at checking the way this country – Israel/Palestine – is presented, in view of the ongoing conflict between the two nations that claim to be its owners. The basic hypothesis of this research was that the two parties see this country in its entirety as their homeland, which should be expressed in the maps appearing in their respective schoolbooks. In order to substantiate this hypothesis, two Israeli geography textbooks were examined too. They were officially licensed by the Israeli Ministry of Education and were issued by the Israeli Center of Educational Technology (CET), which is considered a central publisher of schoolbooks in Israel.
Indeed, there were found in the Israeli textbooks maps that present the country as one unit with no internal boundaries under the name “Israel” when those maps were not of political character. The following example is a map titled “Soils in Israel”, which also includes the territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (as well as the Golan Heights that was placed under Israeli legal jurisdiction in 1981).
