...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
aid to the Paleostinian Authority is being held up as EU officials discuss conditioning it on reforms to Paleostinian textbooks, PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki confirms to official PA radio.
The story was first reported by The Times of Israel in late February.
The EU is normally the PA’s largest single donor, helping to pay the salaries of Ramallah’s many civil servants. But little aid has been disbursed since 2020.
The aid’s disbursal was stymied when EU official Oliver Varhelyi sought to condition around $10 million in aid on textbooks meeting international standards, creating a bureaucratic quagmire.
In a February interview, a diplomat familiar with the discussions criticized the proposed conditionality.
"Should such substantive financial aid be linked to one element of the relationship between Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...and the Paleostinians?" the diplomat said at the time.
Paleostinian textbooks have long been a subject of controversy. Critics accuse them of containing incitement to violence and glorifying terror, while the PA defends them as simply reflecting the Paleostinian national narrative.