Palestinian schoolchildren walk past a toy stall Tuesday near the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan in Jerusalem’s Old City. Students in Gaza won’t learn about the Holocaust this year in schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.

Gaza City, Gaza Strip ? Gaza students won’t learn about the Holocaust this year.

Angry protests by Palestinians have disrupted tentative plans to introduce information about the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews into the curriculum in U.N. schools.

The dispute touches on one of the largest psychological barriers dividing Arabs and Jews: Arabs see the Holocaust as an excuse for Israel’s creation, and Jews see Arab Holocaust denial as a rejection of Israel’s right to exist.

The uproar has left the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which runs 221 of more than 600 primary and secondary schools in Gaza, caught between the territory’s Hamas leaders — some of them ardent Holocaust deniers — and outraged Jewish groups.

Some in Hamas accused the U.N. agency of trying to generate sympathy for Israel and conspiring against the Palestinians. In turn, Jewish activists demanded to know why the subject of the genocide wasn’t part of the human rights syllabus in the first place.

“Now we are being bashed from all quarters,” the agency’s chief in Gaza, John Ging, told The Associated Press.

The controversy erupted last week, after an umbrella group for Palestinian refugees in Gaza protested what it said were plans to teach eighth-graders in U.N. schools about the Holocaust.

U.N. officials denied they had such intentions for this school year and insisted they weren’t scaling back in response to public pressure.

Regional agency chief Karen Abu Zayd suggested information about the Holocaust could be included in later years, as part of lessons about the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UNWRA’s Web site mentions general plans to include the Holocaust in lessons on the “historical context that gave rise to” that declaration.

Abu Zayd said the UNWRA field office in Gaza is still developing the curriculum, which would be presented to parents and others in the community before it is introduced. “It is very much a draft,” she said.

A U.N. employee involved in shaping the curriculum, who was not authorized to discuss the subject and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that as recently as three months ago, the lessons had been under consideration for the 2009-10 human rights course.

U.N. officials said their schools in Gaza already have the most detailed and advanced human rights courses, and teaching the Holocaust would break new ground.

The subject is not taught in U.N.-run schools for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Nor is it taught in Palestinian government schools in the West Bank or Gaza.