RAMALLAH: The Israeli government has decided to remove references to what Palestinians call the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said on Wednesday.

The term “Al-Nakba,” is used by Palestinians to describe the founding of Israel in a war when some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. The phrase remains contentious six decades after Israel was founded.

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

Israeli Arab lawmaker Hana Sweid accused the government of “Nakba denial.” “It’s a major attack on the identity of the Palestinian Arab citizens of the state of Israel, on their memories and their adherence to their identity,” he said.

Teachers will be free to discuss the personal and national tragedies that befell Palestinians during the war, said Saar, who represents the hard-line governing Likud Party. But textbooks will be revised to remove the term, he added.

The decision applied to a third-grade textbook for Arab schoolchildren. Jewish textbooks make no mention of the term.

A passage in the textbook, describing the 1948 Middle East war at the time of Israel’s creation, said: “The Arabs call the war the Al-Nakba — a war of catastrophe, loss and humiliation — and the Jews call it the Independence War.”