The textbook states that the “Zionist movement established in 1856 its first settlement, known as ‘Montefioriyyah’ [Mishkenot Sha’ananim, built by Sir Moses Montefiore before the emergence of modern Zionism], south-west of the Jerusalem city wall, the series of division [actions] in Palestine has not stopped.”
Zionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897.
This 9th grade social studies textbook goes on to say that “After the ‘Catastrophe’ [Nakba in Arabic] of 1948, it ruled over more than 78% of Palestine’s territory... More than 850 thousand Palestinians were made to emigrate and they and their families lived in refugee camps in Palestine and in the Diaspora. Nothing of it [Palestine] was left, except the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that were occupied [later] in 1967.”
According to most sources, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in the area that became Israel, and they became Palestinian refugees.
The book is specifically funded by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949 to assist Arabs who became refugees during Israel’s War of Independence the previous year. The White House slashed all United States funding of UNRWA in August 2018.