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Gaza, Palestinian Territory (TML) – Hamas is on a collision course with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) over teaching the Holocaust in the organization’s schools in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, the Islamic organization which governs Gaza, announced on Monday that it won’t allow inclusion of the Holocaust in the curriculum of Gaza schools, challenging a decision by UNRWA, which runs many of the schools in the enclave, to include the Holocaust in its human rights curriculum.

Muhammad Asqoul, Hamas’ education minister, said his ministry rejected UNRWA’s “tampering” with the education of Gaza children, adding that the matter crossed a red line that Hamas wouldn’t compromise on. The ministry called on UNRWA to refrain from implementing “extra-curricular” activities in the classroom, saying that the new material would harm the students’ academic achievements.

“Adding the Holocaust to the curriculum at this time is an attempt by the Zionist enemy to garner sympathy and deny all of its crimes,” Ihab Al-Sinwar, head of public relations in Gaza’s Culture Ministry, told The Media Line. “The enemy perpetrated worse crimes than those described in the portrayal of what supposedly took place during the Holocaust.”

The Holocaust — its historical veracity as well as the implications for the Jewish state’s existence — has long been a bone of contention between Israel and the Palestinians. The mass murder of some six million European Jews during World War II at the hands of the Nazis helped garner support in the world community after the war for a Jewish state. Fears of a second Holocaust play a major role in Israel’s security strategy.

A 2009 poll surveying 700 Israeli-Arabs – Palestinians who live inside Israel and are citizens of the Jewish state – showed that some 30% didn’t believe the Holocaust occurred. Last year, Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial began offering seminars to Arab teachers, hoping to wrest contemporary Mideast politics from the historical events of the Holocaust.

Al-Sinwar described UNRWA’s decision as a premeditated “intellectual attack” on the Palestinian people and called on Gaza’s teachers and students not to comply with the decision. A press release posted on the Culture Ministry’s website said the proposed curriculum was a blatant attempt to push a “culture of normalization with the occupation” by propagating “stories and lies” that touch on the emotional chord.

“Teachers should implant our Palestinian and Arab culture in the minds of our students,” Al-Sinwar said.

Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, said the new curriculum came in the context of UNRWA’s general education of human rights.

“We have been teaching the universal declaration of Human Rights and the UN resolutions as part of our school curriculum since 2003,” Gunness told The Media Line. “In light of the special circumstances in Gaza, we have decided to enrich our curriculum there with the events that took place during World War II, including the Holocaust.”

UNWRA plays a critical role in Gaza as a provider of health, education and welfare services to people designated as refugees. Some 213,000 pupils are taught in UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip. But the organization has had at times a troubled relationship with Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Holocaust teaching has been a flashpoint, with the Islamic group criticizing UNWRA last year for including a visit to a Holocaust exhibition during a trip for Gaza students to the U.S.

Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, said Hamas didn’t accept as historical fact that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and preferred to teach Gaza students “more important issues”.

“For Hamas, this is a moral issue – ‘why teach the children about the Holocaust when we are under Israeli occupation?’” he asked.

Abusada said he has called on Hamas leaders to include lessons about the Holocaust in schools, saying they could be included alongside lessons about the Naqba, or disaster, the terms Palestinians use to describe their defeat in the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. He said the debate has been going on in Gaza for at least a year, but Hamas refused to budge.

“They claim Israel and the Jews didn’t learn from the mistakes of the others, and repeated them,” Abusada said.

The Ministry of Culture called on legal institutions to press charges against UNRWA and force it revoke its decision.

“Given what is known about Hamas and its ideology, their statements are not surprising,” Estee Yaari, a spokeswoman for Yad Vashem told The Media Line. “We are confident that the UN will stand firm in ensuring that Holocaust studies are part of the school curriculum. The Holocaust and its history have universal implications that remain relevant today for all people.”

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