History students fight to use textbook presenting both Israeli and Palestinian narratives

Students taking advanced history classes at a high school near Sderot are fighting to use a textbook that presents Israeli and Palestinian narratives side by side.
The students at Sha’ar Hanegev High School are demanding to meet with the head of the Education Ministry’s pedagogical secretariat, Zvi Zameret, who banned the school from using the book. They want to ask Zameret why a book that presents history from the Palestinians’ perspective should be kept out of high schools.
Last week Zameret and a senior colleague from the Education Ministry conducted a "clarification meeting" with the high school’s principal, Aharon Rothstein, to find out why he authorized the use of "Learning Each Other’s Historical Narrative."
The ministry says this meeting was "cordial," but sources close to this affair report otherwise, saying that the atmosphere of the discussion, along with the decisions reached, were "difficult and very troubling."
During the meeting, Zameret reaffirmed that he was banning the book because the ministry never approved it.
Senior Eden Makluf says the students want to "hear personally an explanation as to why we cannot use this book. We cannot understand the education ministry’s deep fear of this book, which presents two positions on the dispute, Israeli and Palestinian," he said. "The ministry’s claim that it has not given authorization is self-serving: It doesn’t have any intention to provide such authorization, and there isn’t any other book that provides the Palestinian version."
Makluf added, "The Education Ministry is showing cowardice. It does not want to change anything in history studies, lest, heaven forbid, we learn about values it opposes."
"The Education Ministry apparently believes that if we learn the Palestinian narrative, we will think that the Palestinians are right," added Liel Sklozov, another student in the class. "That demeans our intelligence, and it’s a little insulting to say we will believe anything we read. The same thing could be said about using Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ in history lessons. It doesn’t work that way."