Michael Higgins: Recognizing ‘Palestine’ was so obviously a mistake

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It’s the same story with education materials: promised reforms with nothing done. 

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In a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, Abbas pledged “modernization of the education sector, including the development of a curriculum that is free from incitement according to the UNESCO standards.” 

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But the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), an independent NGO that monitors education materials throughout the world for hate and incitement of violence, found the latest Palestinian textbooks full of antisemitism. 

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“The review finds that the 2025-2026 Palestinian Authority curriculum continues to systematically violate UNESCO principles and educational standards. Published in September 2025, the curriculum incites antisemitism and violence, promotes jihad and martyrdom, glorifies terrorism, rejects peacemaking and the two-state solution, and erases Israel from maps. It has not been substantively modified since the 2020-21 school year, maintaining the same ideological framework first established in the 2016 reform cycle,” read the review. 

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In classes and textbooks covering history, geography, social studies, science and mathematics, Palestinian children are being taught to hate Israel and its people. In one example in the review, Israelis weren’t even human beings, they were depicted as “demonic monsters” laughing as they committed atrocities and killed children. 

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And these are the reformed textbooks. 

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Meanwhile, getting the guns, explosives and other weapons out of the hands of Hamas, another Carney condition, is going nowhere. 

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Demilitarization was a key part of last September’s U.S.-backed Gaza ceasefire plan, but Hamas has repeatedly said it will not give up its weapons and there are reports it is actively rearming. 

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Meir Ben Shabbat, Israel’s former national security advisor who played a key role in negotiating the Abraham Accords, said the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security agency recently destroyed a weapons production site that had been used by Hamas to manufacture explosive devices and store weapons. 

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Writing in the Israeli Hayom newspaper, he quoted Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim as saying that “resistance” was a Palestinian right and weapons were an inseparable part of that “resistance.” 

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“Earlier, the spokesman for Hamas’ military wing claimed that the demand to disarm was ‘a scandalous attempt by the occupation to achieve through negotiations what it could not achieve on the battlefield’,” wrote Shabbat. 

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Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, wrote in March that Hamas was not only refusing to disarm, since the ceasefire plan it had become emboldened. 

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“It now appears more able to operate above ground than it did before the plan,” he wrote in an analysis for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank. 

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Meanwhile, Hamas is preparing to restart its war with Israel, according to the Kan News public broadcasting service. 

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Hamas was reported to be producing hundreds of explosives and anti-tank missiles every month, recruiting young fighters, and rebuilding underground structures demolished by the Israel Defense Forces, said the broadcaster. 

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And a United Nations report cited numerous executions in Gaza by Hamas, including two mass killings both involving 11 men, as well as severe punishment beatings.