+972, June 20, 2016

By the virtue of their participation, settler officials have snuck a small asterisk onto the march’s banner equality, a footnote that says: “Equality, just not for Palestinians in the occupied territories.”

Head of the regional Shomron settlement council Yossi Dagan laid out that discriminatory approach quite clearly in an oped in Ynet Monday [...]: “A child is a child, and he deserves equal opportunity whether he was born in Tel Aviv, Karnei Shomron, or Taibe.” (Karnei Shomron is a settlement in the West Bank and Taibe is an Arab town inside Israel.) Yes, there should be equality for children from Tel Aviv, Karnei Shomron, and Taibe, as far as Dagan is concerned; just not for children from Burkin, Nablus or Deir Istiya, Palestinian cities and villages that suffer on a daily basis as a result of the very existence of the settlement he heads — for some reason they don’t make the cut.