GAZA CITY 

The Gaza Education Ministry on Thursday said the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) would "drop" the subject of human rights in its school curricula, which have been at the center of a recent row between the two bodies.

In a statement, the ministry said it agreed with the UNRWA not to teach human rights at the UNRWA's schools in the region, saying that modern notions of human rights included "ideas foreign to the faith and culture of Palestinians."

On Monday, a Gaza Education Ministry official claimed taht the UNRWA planned to teach "unlicensed" curricula to Palestinian students, the contents of which "violate Islamic and Palestinian national principles."

The official argued that the new educational materials also ignored the British role in the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, which marked the creation of Israel and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland.

The UNRWA runs a network of 703 schools – in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the Palestinian West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan – in which Palestinian students receive a basic education. 

The UN body has denied the claims, asserting that it could "never prepare curricula that contradict the traditions and customs of the Palestinian people."

However, the two sides said on Wednesday that they planned to draw up a joint committee tasked with examining the refugee agency's updated curricula.

By Ola Atallah

englishnews@aa.com.tr