Saudi Arabia has made huge changes in its school curriculum by removing a chapter named “Greater Israel”.
As per Saudi officials, the chapter was removed from all of the school curriculum, which said that Israel sought to expand its territory from the Nile River to the Euphrates as part of a plan to establish “Greater Israel”.
The change was identified in a July 2026 review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), which examined changes to Saudi textbooks published between 2024 and 2026.
The lesson, titled “The Zionist Danger”, previously appeared in a Hadith textbook for students in Grades 10 to 12.
According to the review, it accused Israel of seeking territorial expansion between the Nile and Euphrates rivers in order to establish what it described as “Greater Israel”.
The removal is part of wider changes to Saudi educational material dealing with Israel, Zionism, religious minorities and jihad.
In one example cited by the review, a Grade 11 history textbook replaced the description “the Zionist enemy” with “the Israeli occupation”.
Another textbook removed the statement that “the Muslims will never give up Jerusalem”.
The review also said several references involving Jews and other religious communities had been removed from newer editions.
It said that examples it had previously identified as antisemitic were no longer present in the latest curriculum it examined.
However, IMPACT-se said the changes did not amount to a complete shift in how Israel is portrayed in Saudi textbooks.
Some textbooks continue to describe Israel as an occupying state, while Israel is still absent from a number of maps used in the curriculum.
The changes come as Saudi Arabia continues to revise its education system and its treatment of politically and religiously sensitive issues.
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