Israel cuts 1948 ‘catastrophe’ from Arabic texts

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said Wednesday.

The reference to “al-naqba,” the Arabic word catastrophe, as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation, was inserted by a dovish Israeli education minister in 2007.

The phrase remains contentious six decades later, a symptom of the continuing divisions in Israel. Many Israeli Arabs identify politically with their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, some Israeli Jews accuse Israeli Arabs of disloyalty to the country.

Israel’s current government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line Likud Party, includes members who favor cracking down on Israeli Arabs by ordering loyalty oaths or even moving them out of Israel.

“No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe,” Education Minister Gideon Saar of Likud told Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.