Education Minister Gideon Saar has instructed that Arab sector textbooks not teach that the establishment of the State of Israel was a catastrophe for Arabs.

He said that the order to remove the concept of nakba ("disaster") from the Arab textbooks followed a thorough investigation of the matter. "This was originally a decision made by the Knesset Education Committee during the term of the previous Knesset," he said, "and I will remind you that the committee was headed by Labor MK Michael Melchior, such that this position has across-the-board support.”