Activists have relaunched efforts to make Scottish schools teach what has been described as a more “pro-Palestinian narrative”.

Scottish Friends of Palestine (SFP) has created a petition calling on Edinburgh “to acknowledge the right of Scotland’s pupils to a bias-free education on the topic of Israel-Palestine”.

Nikita Bassi, a new member of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency office team, has been encouraging people on social media to sign the petition.

The move by SFP dates back to 2015, when a row broke out over a worksheet given to pupils at a North Lanarkshire school which described Palestinians as terrorists.

Pro-Palestinian activists complained and made representations to the Scottish government that there should be an “impartial” teaching resource on Israel and Palestine.

But Stanley Grossman of Scottish Friends of Israel said the material they submitted was “very divisive and potentially harmful”.

Micheline Brannan, chair of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, said that the new move by the SFP was an attempt to “introduce a pro-Palestinian narrative into Scottish schools”.

Mr Grossman warned that with so many new members of the Scottish Parliament who are unfamiliar with the issues at stake, it was likely that the whole process — and attendant arguments — would begin again. “We have to take this seriously,” he said.

In 2017 the then Scottish Education Secretary, John Swinney, acknowledged that there was no possibility that both sides would reach agreement on the topic and it was dropped.

Mr Swinney’s successor, Shirley-Anne Somerville, will now decide whether to take the matter further.