Peace in the Middle East will not come through slogans or indictments. It will come through the hard, patient work of diplomacy, institution-building, and trust.
Imraan Ismail-Moosa of the Al-Jamah Party, a party-political minnow with 0.24% of the vote and two seats in the National Assembly, has notified Parliament of his intention to introduce a private members bill to implement the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in domestic law.
Its immediate target would be South Africans who directly or indirectly render support to the state of Israel. Although the text of the proposed bill has not been released, it could extend to criminalising the mere expression of support for Israel or its policies vis-à-vis the occupied Palestinian territories.
Therefore, in lieu of a final column before taking a leave of absence, let me present for your consideration a previously unpublished essay that critiques the use of the term “apartheid” in relation to Israel.
It is long, but since new columns of mine won’t return until the new year, you’ll have all the time in the world to read it.
1. Introduction
The term “apartheid” carries a heavy moral and political weight.
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly condemned apartheid as a “crime against humanity” in 1966, a view which was endorsed by the UN Security Council in 1984.
That label, with its clear echoes of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals implicated in the Holocaust, imputes to the accused not only crimes, but abject evil. It places the accused outside the community of civilised nations. It connotes the most grave condemnation that the accuser could possibly express.
It is a solemn and consequential term that ought to be reserved for only the most extreme transgressions of the norms of civilised conduct, when words such as “atrocity”, “war crimes” and even “genocide”, are not enough.
1.1. Apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid originated in South Africa, where it described a system of institutionalised racial segregation, economic exploitation, and political disenfranchisement that sought to entrench white minority rule over the black majority.
The first attested use of the term is from 1929. It is Afrikaans, which is the youngest of all the Germanic languages, having evolved from Dutch with distinct influences from other languages, and in particular from the language of Malay slaves.
It derives from the roots “apart”, meaning “separate”, and “-heid”, meaning “-ness”. A close English translation, which has widely been used for similar policies worldwide, would be “segregation”. The official English translation in South Africa was “separate development”.
The word became an official term of policy in 1948, when the National Party led by D.F. Malan ousted the incumbent United Party of Jan Smuts. It had campaigned on strict racial segregation, white supremacy and Afrikaner nationalism, in contrast with the gradualist integration and perceived Anglicising policies of the political opposition.
For the next 46 years, prior to and after South Africa’s formal independence from Britain in 1961, apartheid came to describe an elaborate, formal, almost totalitarian legal system of racial segregation in defence of white dominance. It affected the whole of society, from the upper echelons of business and politics, to individual inter-personal relationships.
In 1966, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted resolution 2202, which condemned the South African government’s policy of apartheid to be a crime against humanity.
It was held to be a violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the UN Charter, and particularly of Article 55(c), which enjoins UN member states to promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”.
This was followed in 1973 by the adoption of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, to which 91 UN member states assented, with the exception of 26 abstentions and opposition from Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
In 1984, the UN Security Council endorsed the 1966 resolution, “demanding the immediate eradication of apartheid”.
1.2. “Apartheid” Israel
When international activists, policymakers, or scholars apply the label “apartheid” to Israel, the intention is not to offer a neutral description. The comparison seeks to evoke outrage. It is intended to suggest that Israel, like apartheid South Africa, is fundamentally illegitimate and morally bankrupt.
Such usage has gained traction in recent years, especially after major human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as a Special Rapporteur to the UN, have issued reports arguing that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians constitutes apartheid.
Although these claims are expressions of opinion, and hold no legal force, the application of the apartheid label to Israel is both inaccurate and counterproductive.
While it captures aspects of inequality and discrimination that undeniably exist, it distorts the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reduces a deeply complex struggle into a simplistic morality play.
This label demonises Israel by collapsing its political and security dilemmas into a narrative of willful racial oppression, while ignoring critical dimensions of the conflict: the historical origins of Israeli and Palestinian territorial claims; the differentiated legal and citizenship status of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza; the existential security threats Israel has faced and continues to face from neighbouring countries, Palestinian leadership, extremist groups and Iranian proxies; the inability of Palestinian political leadership to establish a viable, peacefully coexisting state alongside Israel; and the extremely limited alternatives to military occupation available to Israel in the absence of a successful two-state solution.
This essay argues that while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raises urgent questions of justice and human rights, describing Israel as an “apartheid state” is neither accurate nor helpful.
Instead, a more nuanced understanding of the conflict – its origins, history, and ongoing challenges – is essential for promoting pathways toward peace and coexistence. The discussion begins with a historical analysis, contrasting the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the dynamics of South African apartheid.
2. The nature of apartheid
For non-white South Africans, apartheid meant that they were second- or third-rate citizens in their own home country.
It extended to disenfranchisement (for those who did have the right to vote in the Cape Province), the perpetual risk of arbitrary dispossession of landed property, strict limits on the kinds of businesses they could operate and jobs they were allowed to accept, geographical separation from people of other racial categories, segregated (and third-rate) public and private services, frequent harrassment by the police and government bureaucrats, detention without trial, and brutal suppression of dissent.
2.1. “Homelands”
In 1970, the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act deprives black South Africans of their national citizenship, and converted it into citizenship of one of a number of previously-established “homelands” within South Africa, depending on tribal origin.
These homelands, or “bantustans”, were territorially limited and located in poor rural areas far from the economic hubs of South Africa.
This rendered black men, women and children foreigners in their own country. The claimed intent was that these homelands would be permitted to “develop” as equal but independent states, but that was merely rhetorical propaganda designed to put a veneer of respectability on what was a brutal displacement and translocation policy – allocating a mere 13% of the country’s land surface area to a large majority of its population.
No country or supra-national organisation ever recognised the sovereignty of these homelands, though South Africa lobbied intensely for their recognisition as independent states.
The non-agricultural black population that remained in “white” South Africa was largely sequestered in under-developed townships on the urban periphery, or near industrial and mining locales. Most business activity was prohibited in these townships, and they remained forever undeveloped.
Black adults who sought employment in white-owned businesses or whites-only districts were required to carry passbooks that entitled them the right to travel as migrant labourers.
This system fractured many black families, with fathers working on mines, farms or in cities, while mothers were forced to remain in their homelands to raise children.
2.2. Other races
People of Indian descent and mixed-race (“coloured”) people enjoyed greater freedom, but remained second-class citizens by comparison with white South Africans. They, too, were segregated into racially homogeneous neighbourhoods.
For white people, and particularly for Afrikaners, apartheid offered job reservation to ensure social mobility, comfortable employment opportunities in a large and well-paid civil service, tidy whites-only neighbourhoods with subsidised housing, whites-only public and private facilities, access to a cheap black labour force, and a monopoly on participation in local, provincial and national politics.
For all South Africans, apartheid imposed heavy-handed censorship and limited political freedom, enforced by a draconian state.
2.3. Illegitimate government
The conventional police, security police, and later the army, were all deployed to suppress would-be revolt by black South Africans and collaboration by liberal-minded members of the other races. A common joke among white people was that the police were always decent enough to fire warning shots – after a black suspect had been shot dead.
Apartheid was a fundamentally illegitimate system of government, in which people were separated and oppressed on the basis of race, and white people enjoyed status, rights, freedoms, privileges, wealth and economic opportunities that were strictly denied to people of other races. Black people in particular came last in the pecking order, and were often openly discriminated against, insulted and abused by their white masters.
When the UN denounced apartheid as a “crime against humanity”, it was absolutely correct to do so.
3. The Origins of the Palestinian Conflict vs. South African Apartheid
One of the most fundamental problems with the apartheid analogy lies in its treatment of history. Apartheid South Africa was not simply a product of conflict between rival groups; it was a deliberate system engineered to entrench white supremacy and maintain minority rule over a disenfranchised black majority.
Israel, by contrast, did not emerge out of a racial hierarchy but out of a protracted conflict between two national movements, each with competing claims to the same land. Without acknowledging these origins, the analogy risks obscuring rather than clarifying the nature of the problem.
3.1. Apartheid as racial domination
Apartheid in South Africa was explicitly racial. From 1948 until its dismantling in the early 1990s, the Afrikaner-led government instituted a legal framework that classified every individual by race – white, black, coloured, or Indian – and assigned rights, privileges, and restrictions accordingly.
Whites enjoyed full political participation, land ownership, freedom of movement, and economic opportunity. Black South Africans, by contrast, were stripped of citizenship, confined to “homelands”, denied access to quality education, and forced into labor markets designed to exploit them while preventing upward mobility.
The very purpose of apartheid was to entrench white rule permanently. The system did not arise from a security dilemma or mutual territorial conflict between historically separate nations or peoples; it arose from a desire to establish dominance of one racial group over another within the borders of a unitary nation state.
It was fundamentally unilateral: the Afrikaner government claimed to seek coexistence with the black population, but in fact sought segregation and subordination of black South African citizens.
3.2. Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism
The origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by contrast, lie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when two nationalist movements – Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism – developed parallel claims to the same territory.
Zionism emerged in response to centuries of antisemitism and persecution in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, which killed six million Jews and underscored the vulnerability of Jews without a state.
For Zionists, the return to their ancestral homeland was not about ruling over another people but about ensuring Jewish survival and self-determination. In principle, and unlike apartheid, this is consistent with Article 55 of the UN Charter, which guarantees the right to self-determination.
Palestinian nationalism developed in response to both the decline of the Ottoman Empire and increasing Jewish immigration, which had begun years earlier. For Palestinians, the creation of Israel in 1948 represented not liberation but catastrophe (“nakba”), as hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes.
The national consciousness of the Palestinians was shaped by the view of Israel as an enemy state responsible for Palestinian dispossession, exile and lack of sovereignty.
Thus, while South African apartheid was a system of racial domination within a unitary state, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict emerged from two separate peoples each seeking national self-determination in the same territory. This fundamental distinction undermines the apartheid analogy.
3.3. The role of war and displacement
The formative events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict further distinguish it from apartheid.
Consistent with the UN recognition of the right self-determination, it was a UN Security Council resolution that adopted the partition plan according to which the State of Israel was established on 14 May 1948.
That plan also sought to establish a coterminous State of Palestine, and declared that “any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution” be considered “a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter [which entitles the Security Council to take measures to maintain or restore international peace and security].”
The Jewish leadership accepted the United Nations partition plan, but Arab leaders rejected it. Instead, all the states surrounding the newly-created State of Israel immediately declared war on it, thereby violating both Article 39 of the UN Charter and Resolution 181.
In the ensuing conflict, approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. The war left Israel in control of more territory than the UN had allotted, while Palestinians were left stateless, many confined to refugee camps in neighboring countries.
Subsequent wars in 1967 and 1973 deepened the divide. In 1967, in a defensive war against Arab states, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which had been used as military beachheads against Israel during the 1967 war.
The West Bank and East Jerusalem had been under Jordanian occupation since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and were formally annexed by Jordan in 1950. The Gaza Strip had been an Egyptian governorate since 1948.
Israel subsequently annexed East Jerusalem (from Jordan), but has not done so with either the West Bank or Gaza.
These two territories, home to millions of Palestinians, but never formally part of Israel (and in the case of Gaza, of any state) since the dissolution of the British Mandate, which itself followed the fall of the Ottoman Empire, became the core of the conflict over the next half-century.
Neither Jordan nor Egypt ever sought to reclaim the territories they lost in 1967.
Unlike apartheid South Africa, which sought to maintain an internal racial hierarchy and disenfranchise full citizens, and attempted to carve “homelands” out of its own territory to which it could displace black people, Israel’s control over the West Bank and Gaza arose out of defensive war. The territories have never been part of Israel and have always been occupied as a measure of temporary necessity, in the absence of any sovereign claim or viable government to reclaim them.
3.4. Peace processes and unresolved claims
Unlike apartheid South Africa, which offered no path for black political empowerment until its collapse, Israel has repeatedly engaged in peace processes that envisioned Palestinian self-determination.
The Oslo Accords of the 1990s established the Palestinian Authority and outlined a framework for eventual statehood, but the process ultimately faltered. The Camp David Summit in 2000, the Annapolis Peace Conference in 2007, and other negotiations similarly aimed at a two-state solution.
While these efforts failed for various reasons, their very existence highlights a difference: Israel, unlike apartheid South Africa, has contemplated and at times actively pursued the political empowerment of Palestinians through statehood.
Critics argue that Israeli policies – settlement expansion, military occupation, and restrictions on movement – have undermined these prospects and entrenched control. These criticisms have merit.
But to equate Israel’s position with apartheid is to ignore the historical context: Israel’s policies, however flawed, emerged from decades of war, failed negotiations, and rejection of settlement offers, not from an inherent desire to permanently subjugate Palestinians as a racial underclass.
3.5. Why historical context matters
Why does this historical distinction matter? Because analogies are not neutral; they shape political discourse and policy choices.
If Israel is an apartheid state, then the only moral solution is the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state, just as the solution in South Africa was the dismantling of white minority rule.
If Israel is instead locked in a largely defensive territorial conflict, with all the awful realities that this entails, then the solution lies in compromise, negotiation, mutual recognition and a mutual commitment to peaceful coexistence.
The apartheid label is an outright condemnation of Israel. It denies it the right to exist, the right to defend its own territorial integrity, and the right to self-determination for the Jewish people. It short-circuits the possibility of constructive engagement by erasing the historical reality that Israel emerged out of existential insecurity, that Palestinians simultaneously seek national liberation, and that both peoples have legitimate claims and grievances.
Without acknowledging these origins, any proposed solution risks being divorced not only from the actual dynamics on the ground, but from the basic principles enshrined in the UN Charter.
4. Legal status of Palestinians in Israel and the territories
One of the most misleading aspects of the apartheid analogy is the assumption that Israel treats all Palestinians as a single, undifferentiated group subject to the same legal and political regime, as South Africa did with black people under apartheid.
In truth, Palestinians are subject to widely varying legal frameworks depending on where they live: as citizens within Israel proper, as residents of East Jerusalem, or as non-citizen residents of the West Bank and Gaza.
These distinctions matter, both morally and legally, and undermine simplistic claims of a singular system of apartheid.
4.1. Israeli Arabs
Roughly 21% of Israel’s population, a little over two million people, are Arab citizens of Israel, most of whom identify as Palestinian by heritage. These individuals are full Israeli citizens.
They have the right to vote and stand for office, and they are represented by Arab parties in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Arab Israelis have access to Israeli courts, universities, and public health care.
This is not to deny that discrimination exists. Arab citizens of Israel have long faced structural disadvantages, including disparities in state funding for education, housing, and infrastructure.
There has been wide-spread criticism, much of it valid, of a declarative bill entitled Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which was adopted by the Knesset in 2018 with a slim majority.
It has been criticised for being racist, and for marginalising Arab citizens. However, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that it did not contain discriminatory provisions, did not deny any Israelis their democratic rights, and did not detract from the individual rights of non-Jewish citizens. It held that the rights of non-Jewish Israelis were sufficiently protected by other laws, including the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, which has super-legal status and therefore supercedes any other laws.
The Nation-State Bill is an unfortunate piece of legislation from a liberal viewpoint, and could complicate future peace negotiations. It codifies, but does not fundamentally alter, the nature of the State of Israel, which has been a “national home of the Jewish people” since its inception.
What it does not do is establish a legal framework for institutionalised racism, in the way that South Africa’s numerous apartheid laws did.
Under apartheid in South Africa, no black person could vote in national elections or serve in parliament. Citizenship was stripped, political participation was denied, interracial marriage was criminalised, and basic human rights did not exist. Political activism was forbidden and harshly penalised.
Arab citizens of Israel, while facing day-to-day discrimination, are not disenfranchised nor formally segregated by law. Their situation more closely resembles that of minority populations in democratic states than subjects of a racial caste system.
4.2. East Jerusalem and Residency Status
Another distinct legal category comprises the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, who number around 350,000. Unlike Arab Israelis, they hold permanent residency rather than full citizenship.
The status of East Jerusalem is controversial. Under Jordanian control, all Jews were expelled from East Jerusalem. Under Israeli law, it is part of a unified Jerusalem, in which freedom to worship is accorded to residents of all religions.
The Israeli Supreme Court also considers it Israeli territory. The United Nations, however, has never recognised Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, and considers it an illegally occupied territory.
Having been granted permanent residency status, the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem now have access to Israeli social services, health care, and education, and can travel relatively freely within Israel. However, as non-citizens, they can only vote in municipal elections, and not in national Israeli elections.
Their residency is also discretionary, and can be revoked under certain conditions, such as prolonged absence from the city.
Critics argue that this conditionality constitutes a form of demographic engineering: an attempt to maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem by incentivising or pressuring Palestinian departure.
But even if one accepts this critique, one has to consider that Israel can hardly be expected to grant full citizenship status to residents of a territory that the UN does not consider legally annexed. Demanding one without conceding the other is a contradiction in terms.
It is important to note that there was no analogous situation in apartheid-era South Africa. In South Africa, black South African citizens were denied access to the same rights and privileges that were reserved for white citizens.
4.3. West Bank and Gaza: juridical fragmentation
The legal status of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is more complicated and frequently invoked in apartheid analogies. However, applying the same legal standard here is even more illogical than in East Jerusalem, given the unique circumstances in these territories.
In the West Bank, the territory is divided under the Oslo Accords into Areas A, B, and C. Area A is under full control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Area B under shared control, and Area C, comprising around 60% of the territory, remains under Israeli military and civil control. Palestinians in these areas are not Israeli citizens, do not pay Israeli taxes, and are not entitled to vote in Israeli elections. Their legal status is governed by military law or the PA’s own jurisdiction, depending on the area.
In Gaza, Israel withdrew its military and civilian presence in 2005. Since 2007, the territory has been governed by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by the EU, the United States, and others.
Hamas is not exactly a proxy under the direct control of Iran, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, but as a group committed to the annihilation of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea”, it enjoys extensive Iranian support on the basis that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
On 7 October 2023, Israel declared war against Hamas. It had been the nominal government in Gaza for 16 years, and on 7 October of that year launched a widespread incursion into Israel, under the cover of 4,300 rockets fired at civilian Israeli targets.
It fielded about 6,000 fighters, of which more than a third were armed Palestinian civilians wearing civilian attire. This unprovoked invasion cost 1,195 people their lives, of which more than two thirds were civilians. A further 251 people were taken back to the Gaza strip as hostages, many of whom have since died in captivity.
Prior to the outbreak of this war, Israel tightly controlled its borders with Gaza, as well as Gazan airspace and maritime access. It did not, and had not since 2005, administer daily life within the Strip. Gaza was blockaded, but not occupied in the conventional administrative sense.
It is in these areas, and especially in the West Bank, that critics allege the existence of a dual legal regime, with Israeli settlers subject to civilian law while Palestinians are subject to military law.
This duality undoubtedly raises serious concerns, but it also brooks no simple resolution.
More pertinently, the apartheid comparison again fails on key points: Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not citizens of Israel, nor do they live in sovereign Israeli territory. Their leadership, especially in Gaza but also in the West Bank, continues to wage war, and perpetrate or reward terrorist attacks, against Israel.
Their status is best understood within the framework of an unresolved international conflict involving an incomplete peace process, rather than as residents of a state that has formally annexed them and institutionalised permanent subjugation.
5. Existential threats and the role of security in Israeli policy
A further failure of the apartheid analogy lies in its disregard for the existential threats that Israel has faced, and continues to face. Historically, all Israel’s neighbouring states have been implicated in wars of aggression against it, but Israel has concluded peace agreements with all of them.
However, it continues to face attacks from terrorist groups and regional proxies based in southern Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. Some of these groups, like the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades (the former military wing of Al Fatah) and the Al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas) are associated with, or under the direct control of, the nominal governments of the occupied territories.
There are several more groups who continue to carry out acts of terrorism or war against Israel, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Abu Nidal, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Unlike apartheid South Africa, which faced primarily domestic dissent and some external pressure from neighboring states, but never faced an existential threat from either its own black population or neighbouring powers, Israel is situated in a region where significant actors continue to reject its very right to exist.
5.1. Hostile actors and rejectionism
Palestinian armed groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad openly declare their goal to be the destruction of the State of Israel.
The Hamas Charter originally called for Israel’s annihilation and, although revised, continues to reject normalisation or long-term peace, and continues to pursue a single Palestinian State that includes all the territory of the present State of Israel.
The Palestinian Authority has, at times, participated in peace negotiations, but even within its ranks, rejectionist voices persist, and incitement remains a challenge. Al Fatah, which governs the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, continues to pay bounties to militants who are imprisoned for terrorist attacks in Israel, and pays pensions to the families of “martyrs”.
Further afield, Israel faces threats from Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq, all of whom are heavily armed and trained with the explicit aim of attacking Israeli targets.
Iran itself, a powerful regional actor, funds these proxies and frequently threatens Israel’s destruction.
No comparable threat existed for the South African apartheid regime.
While it faced armed resistance from the African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation movements, none of them called for the physical elimination of the white population.
Nelson Mandela, in his famous Rivonia Trial speech, explicitly affirmed his hope for a future of peaceful racial coexistence. His stance was the very antithesis of Hamas’s declarations.
5.2. Security as a driving principle of occupation
The presence of Israeli military forces in the West Bank, the construction of the security barrier, and the restrictions on movement are frequently cited as apartheid-like policies.
But their motivation is not racial domination or racial segregation; it is security.
The West Bank security barrier has been widely denounced as an “apartheid wall”, and there is a valid argument to be made that it does not, but should, follow the 1949 Armistice Demarcation Line (the “Green Line”).
While undeniably disruptive to Palestinian life, however, it was constructed not to effect racial segrataion. It was built in response to the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, during which terrorist attacks killed over 1,000 Israelis. Since the barrier’s construction, such attacks have decreased dramatically, which establishes a legitimate post hoc justification for its existence.
Checkpoints and military raids, likewise, are founded upon the need of the Israeli government to disrupt weapons smuggling, thwart terrorist operations, and maintain order in contested zones.
These practices may be viewed as heavy-handed, excessive, or even abusive, and they are certainly not immune from criticism, but they are not born from racial ideology. They are born from the reality of ongoing armed threats.
Israel’s Supreme Court has frequently reviewed and, in some cases, constrained the country’s defence and occupation practices, which further distinguishes Israel from regimes like apartheid South Africa, where courts largely served as rubber stamps for systemic oppression.
6. The inability of Palestinian leadership to establish a peacefully coexisting state
One of the most underexamined but essential differences between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and South African apartheid is the lack of a coherent and capable Palestinian state actor with the willingness, the legitimacy, and the institutional capacity, to achieve and maintain peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Unlike black South Africans under apartheid, who were internally unified under a broad grouping known as the United Democratic Movement, and who sought equal rights within their own state, the Palestinian national movement is fragmented, ideologically divided, corrupt, and frequently unable or unwilling to pursue a peaceful two-state outcome.
6.1. A fractured leadership
The Oslo Accords of the 1990s represented a moment of hope. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat renounced terrorism and recognised Israel’s right to exist, while Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was a stepping stone to statehood, with governance responsibilities over most of the West Bank and parts of Gaza.
But this hope quickly began to unravel. The PA soon became associated with corruption, nepotism and authoritarianism. Elections were delayed and never repeated, dissent was supressed, and the rule of law deteriorated.
Meanwhile, Hamas, an Islamist militant group ideologically opposed to the very existence of Israel, began to gain support, particularly in Gaza, where it presented itself as a defiant alternative to the corrupt PA.
In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. The following year, after a brief and violent intra-Palestinian conflict, it seized complete control of Gaza, expelling PA officials and setting up its own de facto government. Since then, the Palestinian territories have been governed by two rival governments: Hamas in Gaza and the PA, controlled by Al Fatah, in the West Bank. Each lacks democratic legitimacy and is incapable both of effective government and of forming a unified front – or any front at all – for peace.
This deep political fragmentation has paralysed the peace process. Israel cannot negotiate with a divided Palestinian polity, especially when one half (Hamas) is openly committed to its destruction and regularly launches rocket attacks on its civilian population, and the other half (Fatah) is corrupt and also turns a blind eye to, or clandestinely supports, terror attacks against Israel.
6.2. Rejectionism and incitement
It is a fundamental misconception of the apartheid analogy that Israel simply refuses to grant equal political rights to Palestinians. In truth, every major Israeli peace initiative – from Oslo, to Camp David (2000), to Taba (2001), to Annapolis (2007), to proposals from prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert – has collapsed not because of Israeli intransigence alone, but because of Palestinian rejectionism and internal dysfunction.
At Camp David in 2000, Israel offered nearly the entire West Bank, shared control of Jerusalem, and a limited return of refugees. Arafat walked away. In 2008, Olmert made an even more generous offer, including land swaps to account for settlement blocs. Mahmoud Abbas walked away.
In parallel, Palestinian media and school curricula have consistently failed to prepare their populations for peaceful coexistence. Textbooks often deny the legitimacy of Israel, omit it from maps, and glorify so-called “martyrs” who have killed civilians. Many Palestinian children learn that killing Jews is the highest honour to which they should aspire.
The PA, despite international funding, has maintained a system of financial rewards to families of terrorists, a practice widely condemned as “pay-for-slay”.
Such incitement and rejectionism are incompatible with the moral logic of the anti-apartheid movement.
The ANC did not build schools that taught children to glorify the killing of white civilians. Its leaders, particularly Nelson Mandela, spoke consistently about reconciliation and coexistence.
Conversely, the apartheid government rightly insisted on an end to paramilitary activities against the South African state and civilians as a pre-condition for negotiations. The ANC, for its part, unilaterally suspended its armed struggle in 1990, which was a pivotal moment in the transition from apartheid to a multi-racial democracy with equal rights under the rule of law.
By contrast, large parts of the Palestinian leadership have pursued strategies of confrontation, incitement, and maximalist demands that reject the premise of a negotiated peace.
6.3. Authoritarianism and democratic stagnation
Moreover, both the PA and Hamas have failed to build the institutions of a functioning democratic state.
Mahmoud Abbas, elected to a four-year term as PA president in 2005, has now ruled for two decades without re-election. Hamas governs Gaza without elections, independent courts, or press freedom.
Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and other organisations have repeatedly documented violations of civil liberties in both Palestinian territories.
Without internal accountability, a popular mandate, or a shared political vision, Palestinian leadership lacks the credibility to negotiate a new dispensation with Israel or the ability to administer a future independent state.
This political vacuum not only makes peace elusive, it entrenches occupation, because there is no viable partner to which Israel can responsibly transfer sovereignty.
To compare such conditions with apartheid South Africa, where black political movements were suppressed by the regime and where there existed a relatively unified liberation movement that actively sought both peace and reconciliation, is to ignore a fundamental asymmetry.
In the Palestinian case, internal political failures have actively undermined the possibility of national emancipation.
6.4. Limited alternatives to military occupation
Critics of Israel frequently highlight the continued occupation of the West Bank and the imposition of blockades on Gaza as evidence of its apartheid-like character. These are serious allegations, and occupation always exacts a moral cost.
However, any fair analysis must confront a difficult but essential question: What are the realistic alternatives available to Israel, especially given the current regional and political dynamics?
6.5. Unilateral withdrawal: the Gaza precedent
In 2005, Israel carried out a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. All settlements were dismantled, Jewish settlers were forcibly removed, and the Israeli military vacated the territory entirely.
The move was politically risky, and deeply controversial within Israel. It was hailed by international observers as a potential breakthrough.
The result, however, was not peace. Hamas quickly rose to power and began arming itself with rockets, drones, and tunnels, with direct support from Iran.
Since 2007, over 15,000 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into southern Israel, targeting civilian towns like Sderot and Ashkelon.
Israel has fought several wars in response, and each time, international calls for ”restraint” ignore the fact that no sovereign state would tolerate constant attacks on its civilian population.
This experience has shaped Israeli strategic thinking, and hardened Israel’s political attitude. Many now view the Gaza withdrawal as a cautionary tale, and not as a model for ending the occupation.
If Israel were to withdraw from the West Bank, especially the strategic Jordan Valley, it risks creating a second, larger Gaza right on the doorstep of its major cities.
6.6. The security vacuum problem
The West Bank is currently governed, in theory, by the Palestinian Authority, but in practice, the PA’s ability to enforce security is weak and dependent on security coordination with Israel.
Were Israel to withdraw completely, it is not at all clear that the PA could prevent a Hamas takeover, as happened in Gaza. Such a collapse would likely usher in an escalation of violence.
The geography of the West Bank makes the prospect of its militarisation a far more serious threat to Israel’s security than Gaza or southern Lebanon ever were.
Hilltops overlook Israel’s densely populated coastal plain. From many of them, you can easily see Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean coast.
Short-range rockets fired from Qibya or Qalqilya could hit Ben Gurion Airport or Tel Aviv within minutes. Haifa would be well within range of Qaffin or Rummanah.
The West Bank security barrier, checkpoints, and military presence are not mere expressions of dominance, but a function of terrain, proximity, and military threat.
Unlike apartheid South Africa, where oppression was used to preserve racial purity and economic exploitation, Israel’s control of the West Bank is driven by security imperatives, not ethnic supremacy or the desire to oppress Palestinians.
Israel would like nothing more than to live in peace alongside a Palestinian State that it could trust not to attack its people, and could be a partner in suppressing militant violence. While its methods are rightly open to criticism, they must be understood within the context of defence strategy, and not racial ideology.
6.7. The absence of a viable peace partner
As argued in section 6.1, the Palestinian leadership is fractured, undemocratic, and unreliable. Offers for peace and statehood have been rejected, and a large portion of the Palestinian population remains under the ideological influence of organisations that deny Israel’s right to exist.
In this context, a complete and immediate withdrawal from the West Bank would not lead to peace or decolonisation. It would more likely lead to chaos, conflict, and further bloodshed.
Even critics of Israeli policy, or of the hardline stance of its present government, must acknowledge that military occupations cannot end in a vacuum. They require a stable, capable, and peaceful successor authority.
This is why Israel has not ended, and cannot end, the occupation. It is not because it seeks permanent hegemony, but because no credible alternative exists at present.
This is tragic, but it is not apartheid.
7. The counterproductive impact of the “apartheid” label
Beyond its historical inaccuracy and analytical weaknesses, describing Israel as an apartheid state is ultimately unhelpful, and even harmful, to the pursuit of peace, justice, and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.
The label is not a neutral descriptor of facts; it is a political weapon, employed to delegitimise one party to the conflict, rather than to advance a negotiated resolution.
It distorts the discourse, entrenches polarisation, and undermines both pragmatic diplomacy and moral clarity.
Worse, it glosses over the repeated refusals of Palestinian leaders to commit to a long-term peace and a two-state solution. It even justifies decades of hostility, violence and aggression committed by Palestinian militants against the Israeli state and Israeli civilians.
If Israel is indeed an apartheid state, then it must be overthrown; then it has no legitimate right to exist. That is exactly what the enemies of Israel – from Hamas to Iran – have always wanted. It contradicts everything the UN tried to achieve with Security Council Resolution 181 back in 1947.
It is also not a reasonable negotiation tactic. Far from trying to appeal to the conscience of the reasonable Israeli, the unfounded blood libel of crimes against humanity is virtually guaranteed to harden Isreali hearts and close Israeli minds. It tells Israelis that they cannot trust the international community to act in good faith to secure a durable peace.
7.1. Simplifying complexity into condemnation
The power of the word “apartheid” lies in its moral absolutism. It does not simply describe inequality or discrimination; it describes a system so immoral that its eradication must be non-negotiable.
This framing may be emotionally satisfying for activists, but it collapses a multi-layered political conflict into a binary of good and evil, where one side is cast as an illegitimate oppressor and the other as a passive victim.
This reductionist lens obscures the moral agency of both sides. It erases the historical and legal context of Israeli statehood. It ignores the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination. It denies the tragic complexity of Palestinian political dysfunction. And most dangerously, it precludes compromise, because if Israel is an apartheid state, then to compromise with it is to appease evil.
7.2. Delegitimisation, not negotiation
The apartheid label is not simply a critique of specific Israeli policies; it is used as a framework to challenge the very legitimacy of the Jewish state.
Prominent slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” do not call for equality alongside Israel. They call for the conquest and destruction of Israel.
The apartheid analogy serves as a rhetorical bridge between human rights discourse and the anti-semitic agenda of those who reject any Jewish state, regardless of borders.
This is deeply counterproductive to peace. It sends a clear message to Israelis, including many on the centre and left, that no matter how much they compromise, withdraw, or restrain themselves, they cannot escape the world’s condemnation as a criminal pariah state.
It hardens Israeli public opinion, reinforces narratives of victimhood and international bias, and empowers right-wing political forces who argue that no amount of concession will ever appease the international community.
This dynamic is not hypothetical.
After the Gaza withdrawal in 2005, which most reasonable observers at the time agreed was a good-faith effort to reduce conflict, Israel was rewarded with rockets, followed by international condemnation for its defensive responses.
When Israeli offers of peace are met with silence or violence, and are still followed by accusations of apartheid, many Israelis understandably conclude that the world is not interested in their security, but only in their demonisation.
7.3. Undermining real human rights advocacy
The Israeli apartheid narrative dilutes genuine human rights advocacy. By invoking the term inappropriately, it trivialises the horrors of apartheid in South Africa, and undermines the credibility of international legal frameworks designed to address crimes against humanity.
If apartheid now includes all situations of asymmetry or occupation, even those arising from unresolved armed conflict, the term ceases to have precise meaning. If all military conflicts and occupation now rise to crimes against humanity, then this term for the most grave of all crimes ceases to have any coherent meaning.
Equating Israel’s legal and security dilemmas with apartheid fosters rhetorical inflation across other conflicts. For example, if Israel – a country which for all its faults maintains an independent judiciary, regular elections, a universal franchise, and civil rights for minorities – is described as an apartheid state, what terminology remains for regimes like North Korea, Iran, or Myanmar?
This inflationary rhetoric does not strengthen human rights norms; it weakens them.
Alienating potential allies and dividing movements
Finally, the apartheid label alienates those who could be allies for peace. Many Jews, including progressive Zionists who support a two-state solution, experience the term as an erasure of Jewish historical trauma and identity. It reduces the Zionist movement to a colonial enterprise, denying the legitimacy of Jewish indigeneity, self-determination, and the existential need for a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust.
To accuse the victims of the first “crime against humanity” of committing crimes against humanity themselves is the ultimate insult, which a large number of Jewish people will reflexively reject with contempt and anger.
This alienation drives wedges between Jewish communities and progressive social movements, some of which increasingly impose ideological litmus tests that equate Zionism with racism.
This has led to a chilling effect where many moderate voices, especially Jewish ones, are excluded from activism spaces unless they renounce the very existence and moral legitimacy of Israel.
Such ideological purism fragments potential coalitions, weakens civil society, and ultimately makes peace less likely, not more.
8. Conclusion: a plea for rhetorical precision and political pragmatism
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a deeply painful and morally challenging issue.
There are undeniable injustices, especially with regard to the status and rights of Palestinians living under occupation. Neither side is wholly innocent, and as in any long-burning conflict, both sides can at times be credibly accused of overstepping the lines of international law.
But these realities must be confronted with intellectual honesty, historical awareness, and political responsibility.
Describing Israel as an apartheid state may provide a blunt instrument for protest, but it does so at the cost of truth and progress towards peace.
It falsely conflates a multidimensional conflict, shaped by decades of war, failed negotiations, and mutual rejection, with a system of racial segregation within a unified state.
It disregards the real legal distinctions between Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem, and non-citizens in the West Bank and Gaza.
It ignores the existential security threats Israel faces from armed groups and hostile states.
It pretends that a viable Palestinian state has been rejected only by Israel, when in fact Palestinian leadership has repeatedly failed to meet the demands of statehood.
And it frames a situation of tragic impasse as a one-sided crime, offering only condemnation, instead of potential solutions.
This is not to defend the status quo. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank imposes real hardships, and the settlement enterprise has created new and difficult facts on the ground.
But critique must be informed and constructive. What is needed is not moral theatre but pragmatic engagement – engagement that recognises both peoples’ legitimate claims, acknowledges the suffering and fears of both sides, and works toward a negotiated compromise that honours the rights and aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians.
In the end, peace will not come through slogans or indictments. It will come through the hard, patient work of diplomacy, institution-building, and trust.
For that to happen, we must abandon simplistic analogies and embrace the full, painful complexity of this conflict. That means rejecting the apartheid label – not because it lets Israel off the hook, but because it blocks the road to a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Note: The author is an independent journalist based in South Africa. He has no ties of any kind to either party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but writes from the perspective of one who was raised in apartheid South Africa, and grew up to strongly oppose apartheid on grounds of classical liberal and non-racial principles. He has written for both niche and mainstream media in South Africa for over 30 years.
ENDS
[Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Israel_flag.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend