ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the primal scene of Palestine was depicted in the first ever Palestinian-produced school textbooks. It focuses on imagery and narrative in relation to the broader questions. Palestinian textbooks have been examined and criticized heavily by Israeli studies. During seventh grade students are exposed to further geographical and historical information about Palestine in their school textbooks. The text articulates the natural borders of Palestine as the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The selected images and maps in the Palestinian textbooks prepare students to see Palestine as fragments, meanwhile only iconic places in the West Bank and Gaza are visually and textually emphasized. The Palestinian leadership welcomed this move as a palpable outcome of diplomatic victory. Palestine ceased to exist as an imagined totality. Instead, it appears as an eclectic assemblage of temporal, demographic, and spatial fragments in the Palestinian political discourse.
