DUBAI: Bahrain has ordered 17,000 English school textbooks reprinted for labeling the body of water surrounding the Arab island kingdom as the “Persian Gulf,” a political taboo, state news agency BNA reported on Monday.
Bahrain and the other US-allied Gulf Arab states resent the term, which is commonly used in English to denote the Gulf, through which large amounts of oil are shipped.
The Gulf Arab states accuse non-Arab Iran, formerly known as Persia and which lies on the other side of the sea lane, of seeking to dominate the region, a charge Tehran denies. They insist on calling the stretch of water the “Arabian Gulf.”
Bahrain’s education ministry, the news report said, had commissioned an unnamed “overseas establishment” to print the books for third-grade schoolchildren and provided it with “correct material to include in the book, including the Arabian Gulf map.”
“The discrepancy was spotted at the time of distributing the textbooks to students ... The establishment was obliged to re-print 17,000 copies of the textbook after correction of the error,” BNA quoted a ministry official saying.
US President Donald Trump infuriated Iran last October when he appeared to break from more traditional diplomatic parlance by using the term “Arabian Gulf” in a policy speech to describe the waterway.
Bahrain orders 17,000 school textbooks reprinted over ‘Persian Gulf’ gaffe
https://arab.news/cgk69
Bahrain orders 17,000 school textbooks reprinted over ‘Persian Gulf’ gaffe
US plans meeting for Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ in Washington on Feb 19, Axios reports
- The Axios report cited a US official and diplomats from four countries that are on the board
- The plans for the meeting, which would also be a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction, are in early stages and could still change, Axios reported
WASHINGTON: The White House is planning the first leaders meeting for President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” in relation to Gaza on February 19, Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official and diplomats from four countries that are on the board.
The plans for the meeting, which would also be a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction, are in early stages and could still change, Axios reported.
The meeting is planned to be held at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, the report added, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump at the White House on February 18, a day before the planned meeting.
The White House and the US State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
In late January, Trump launched the board that he will chair and which he says will aim to resolve global conflicts, leading to many experts being concerned that such a board could undermine the United Nations.
Governments around the world have reacted cautiously to Trump’s invitation to join that initiative. While some of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies have joined, many of its traditional Western allies have thus far stayed away.
A UN Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the board and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza, where a fragile ceasefire began in October under a Trump plan on which Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas signed off.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan revealed late last year, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said it would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
Many rights experts say that Trump overseeing a board to supervise a foreign territory’s affairs resembled a colonial structure and have criticized the board for not including a Palestinian.The fragile ceasefire in Gaza has been repeatedly violated, with over 550 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers reported killed since the truce began in October. Israel’s assault on Gaza since late 2023 has killed over 71,000 Palestinians, caused a hunger crisis and internally displaced
Gaza’s entire population.
Multiple rights experts, scholars and a UN inquiry say it amounts to genocide. Israel calls its actions self-defense after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages in a late 2023 attack.
