Former UK UN envoy claims Blair pushed PA to remove 'Palestine' from textbooks

A spokesperson for Blair told The Jerusalem Post that Greenstock's claim "is not true and a complete fabrication."

Former British ambassador to the UN Jeremy Greenstock accused former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair of asking the Palestinian Authority (PA) to remove any mention of the word 'Palestine' from schoolbooks.

Greenstock, who held the ambassador role between 1998 and 2003 and then served as Special Representative for Iraq, made the claims while on the David Hearst Podcast on Wednesday. Hearts is Middle East Eye's Editor-in-Chief.

"[Blair] recently, I understand, was asked by the Board of Peace to go to Ramallah and ask to remove from the Palestinian curriculum any mention of the word Palestine if they were to be treated by the Board of Peace as capable of coming to an agreement with Israel to end the current conflict that had stemmed from 7 October onwards," Greenstock told Hearst, recalling information he allegedly received from a ministerial level source.

"Mahmoud Abbas would do no such thing," he continued. "But the very fact that the Board of Peace could ask for that to be done in the Palestinian educational curriculum makes me wonder what principles the Board of Peace is working on, and what understanding they have of justice, of the sense of fairness of the history of all of this, and of where this is going to go."

Greenstock then said he is "convinced personally that Netanyahu has the ambition to deliver for his father the return of Judea and Samaria to Israeli sovereignty, and that he saw an opportunity in the 7 October attacks in 2023 for an Israeli reaction that would take that dream forward."

Greenstock presented contested claims as established fact

A spokesperson for Blair told The Jerusalem Post that Greenstock's claim "is not true and a complete fabrication" and that they have complained about the published article "having told [MEE] beforehand it was not true."

Throughout the interview, Greenstock presented several other contested claims as established fact.

For example, when asked about Israel closing the case into the killing of three British World Central Kitchen workers, he said: "Innocent civilians were clearly killed deliberately in that incident."

There has been no evidence to suggest a deliberate killing.

On April 1, 2024, the IDF mistakenly killed seven international food aid workers working for the World Central Kitchen (WCK).

Last week, the IDF probe admitted that its surveillance officials misidentified the WCK security officials as Hamas members.

While acknowledging the gravity of its error, the chief military prosecutor of the Military Advocate-General (MAG) Corps determined that, notwithstanding serious failures in the process that led to the assessment that Hamas operatives were traveling in the vehicles, the decisions of the commanders did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.

The IDF therefore decided not to open a criminal investigation.

Call to end all trade with West Bank settlements

Then, later in the podcast, Greenstock called for the end of all trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying "they are illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions."

While Greenstock's position reflects the prevailing view among many international institutions, Israel disputes that interpretation, arguing in part that Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention was intended to prohibit forcible population transfers, not the voluntary movement of Israelis into the territory, and that the West Bank's disputed legal status and the terms of previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements must also be taken into account.