Israel's education ministry has disqualified a book depicting a love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian from school curriculums, prompting an outcry from cultural figures. The education ministry said Thursday that Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan's "Gader Haya" (translated as "Borderlife" in English) had been rejected for inclusion in school curriculums. "Officials discussed the matter of including the book in the curriculum," the ministry said in a statement. "After it seriously examined all the considerations, and weighed the advantages and drawbacks, they decided not to include the book in the curriculum." The ministry provided no further details on the rejection of the book, which Israeli media reported had been recommended for inclusion by a ministry-backed committee.

But newspaper Haaretz quoted an education ministry official, Dalia Penig, saying one of the reasons for the exclusion was that the book could undermine the "separate identities" of Jews and Arabs. "Intimate relations... between Jews and non-Jews, are viewed by many in society as a threat to separate identities," she said. That prompted objections from Israeli cultural figures, many of whom have long been at loggerheads with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who formed a new rightwing government following his re-election in May. Writing in Haaretz, commentator Alon Idan said the move was aimed at "protecting the purity of Jewish blood" and reflected "institutionalized race theory." "Gader Haya", published in 2014, tells the story of an Israeli translator and a Palestinian artist who fall in love in New York but later part ways as she returns to the Israeli city of Tel Aviv to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. It was among the winners of the Bernstein Prize for young writers, an annual Israeli award for Hebrew literature.