Over the years, a charge that has repeatedly been levelled at the state of Israel is that is operates an “apartheid state”. And it’s easy to see why Israel’s opponents return to this argument.

The country’s regime of institutionalised separation and discrimination in occupied Palestine appears to meet the definition of apartheid under international law as set out by the United Nations in 1976. The international convention on the suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid defines the system as “similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa”.

This, it says, amounts to “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”.

But having spent years as an analyst of Palestinian security and governance, I believe that labelling Israel as an apartheid state is misleading, precisely because of the considerable differences between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. It does not speak to the lived experience of many of the Palestinians under Israel’s occupation, and its use risks marginalising them in their struggle for their national and human rights.

Language matters. Ultimately the term apartheid obscures as much as it reveals. It diverts attention from the ongoing and seemingly intractable conflict. It ignores Israel’s justifiable need to ensure security for its people. It also does nothing to further the cause of Palestinian self-determination.

Instead it focuses on largely inconsequential arguments about the extent to which Israel does or does not resemble the former South African regime.

There are clearly parallels to be drawn between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the conditions listed above that define apartheid. No Palestinian – anywhere in Israel or occupied Palestine – is equal to an Israeli under the law.

Further, while any Jewish person anywhere in the world can become a citizen of Israel, no Palestinian has the right of return to their homeland. No Palestinian can return to their family’s home in Israel itself, while Palestinians in the diaspora have to get the approval of the Israeli authorities to return to occupied Palestine, an almost impossible task.

Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem face sweeping restrictions on their movements. Large numbers face the confiscation of their land and harsh and discriminatory treatment that has forced people from their homes in what amounts to forcible population transfer. Many cannot live where they want and do not have even the most basic civil rights.

Those living in Gaza have, in effect, been confined to a large prison camp which – even before the current conflict began in October 2023 – has restricted imports of food and goods for decades and subjected inhabitants to regular destructive and lethal assaults.

But the problem with naming Israel as an apartheid state is that the term has become more than a strictly legal description of the situation. And it ignores the fact that the two situations operate under completely different logic.

In South Africa, white people wanted black people for labour. Most Israelis appear to want Palestinians out. A poll taken in May 2025 found overwhelming support among Israelis for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and majority support for the expulsion of Israeli Arabs.

Many Palestinian citizens of Israel have latched on to the term apartheid because it describes their reality as second-class citizens in an ethno-national Jewish state. And many in the Palestinian diaspora have embraced the term because of their lived experience, deprived of their original nationality and unable to return to their family’s homes while any Jewish person can return and claim a citizenship they are denied.

National self-determination

Palestinians who use the term apartheid state often also embrace the solution inherent in the term. The aim is to end the apartheid conditions and live alongside Jews in a single democratic state as equals. This would transform Palestinians’ long struggle for self-determination into something more akin to a civil rights movement.

But not all Palestinians view the term in this way or embrace the one-state solution. This is where calling Israel an apartheid state becomes most problematic. While many of the Palestinians who live in occupied Palestine recognise the legal validity of the term, not all feel that it adequately captures their reality.

Some therefore prefer the term “settler colonialism”. It feels to them like a more appropriate concept in terms of the solutions it suggests. They believe a just two-state solution would allow them to keep their land while reclaiming their rights in that land and even potentially regaining land that has been lost.

Many in occupied Palestine do not want to compromise on their national rights to self-determination. They want separation from Israelis as much as Israelis want it from them.

But in general, Palestinians are realistic about the limitations of both one-state and two-state solutions They could easily be marginalised by either solution. In the former, they risk becoming de facto second-class citizens in a state dominated by Jewish Israelis. In the latter there is the very real prospect that they will end up living in a series of isolated enclaves akin to native reservations, enjoying only the most attenuated sovereignty.

However, many realise they have to compromise. In any one-state solution, they will have to compromise on their national rights, while under a two-state solution they will have to compromise on territory, settling for a state that constitutes 22% or less of the territory of historic Palestine. This willingness to compromise is rooted in realism born out of despair not hope.

The Palestinian national movement is arguably weaker than it has ever been. It is fragmenting along geographic and partisan lines. Palestinians in the diaspora, those who have Israeli citizenship and those in the West Bank and Gaza can hold very different views and there are significant divisions even within those four broad groupings. These divides have become ever more intractable over the past two years of conflict in Gaza.

So, painting Israel as an apartheid state is unrealistic when it comes to the situation faced by Palestinians. It’s a concept that achieves little in terms of a future strategy and, at the same time, undermines Palestinian unity.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Tahani Mustafa, King's College London

Read more:

Tahani Mustafa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.