The new Palestinian textbooks: A strategy for national identity and self-determination

As part of an effort to establish a national identity within the education sector, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) revised its 2018/2019 textbooks. This study seeks to understand the motivation behind the revisions, focusing on how the new content depict ‘the self’ and ‘the other’. Through our analysis, it was discovered that the textbooks should be seen as an extension of the Palestinian struggle for nation-building and self-determination. The PNA's strategy to curricula development represents a departure from the previous Oslo framework with a focus on historical Palestine and defining ‘the other’ on their own terms.