Amman: Marking Israel while leaving out Palestine and Jordan from the maps in Jordanian school textbooks financed by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have stirred hullabaloo across the kingdom.
The books have been distributed to students from grade one to 12 by the Jordanian education ministry, which includes health-related contents, Al Arabiya reports Sunday.
However, few of its pages contained maps which portray Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq all marked while Jordan and Palestine were left out. Though, Jordanian cities, including the capital Amman, Irbid and Zarqa were noted.
“In effect, the exclusion of these names annexes Palestine to Jordan,” the report quotes West Bank Association’s statement. Israel’s Ynetnews website states, “Anyone who recognizes the Zionist entity eliminates Jordan and Palestine.”
The association said that one of the textbooks, provided by US AID as a part of series that displayed the map cautioned students to prevent smoking and also entail topics related to healthy eating habits. “This step intentionally and offensively misleads children under the guise of imparting health awareness.”
The Jordanian Association considers this act as premeditated and against Zionist stance argued that the map specified Golan Heights as an occupied territory, but did not mark other occupied regions, referring to Palestine.
The group called on all teachers to refuse distributing the books, and “warn the students about the dangers that they contain.”
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