Beyond Occupation: Why the Apartheid Analogy for Israel-Palestine Gains Traction Among Experts 

A growing number of human rights organizations, legal scholars, and former Israeli officials are applying the term “apartheid” to Israel’s 58-year control over the Palestinian territories, arguing it constitutes a systematic regime of racial domination rather than a temporary security occupation. This analysis points to a dual legal system where Jewish Israelis enjoy full rights while Palestinians live under military law with a 99% conviction rate, a restrictive permit regime controlling all movement, and segregated infrastructure like Israeli-only highways. Despite Israeli government rejections labeling the charge antisemitic, the assessment gained significant traction with major reports from B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, and was bolstered by a 2024 International Court of Justice opinion citing Israeli acts that amount to apartheid. Critics contend the situation stems from an intractable national conflict, but proponents see accelerating settlement expansion and displacement as evidence of an entrenched, indefinite system of inequality requiring decisive international pressure to change.

Beyond Occupation: Why the Apartheid Analogy for Israel-Palestine Gains Traction Among Experts 

The reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing in early February 2026 was met not with relief, but with a grim recognition of reality. While a fragile lifeline resumed, the fundamental dynamics remained unchanged: Israel retained ultimate control over who and what moved in or out. Of thousands needing urgent medical care abroad, only a trickle were permitted passage. This daily reality, coupled with accelerating displacement in the West Bank and entrenched control, has propelled a once-controversial term from the margins to the mainstream of legal and political discourse: apartheid. 

A growing consortium of human rights organizations, international law scholars, and even former Israeli officials now argue that Israel’s 58-year occupation constitutes a system of apartheid. This is not a casual accusation but a specific legal charge, referring to an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. Understanding this shift requires looking beyond the headlines of violence to the architecture of control that defines life for millions. 

From Legal Definition to Lived Reality 

The term “apartheid” is inextricably linked to South Africa’s former regime. In response to that system, the international community codified apartheid as a crime against humanity in the 1973 International Apartheid Convention and later in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The core definition hinges on intent: a regime that seeks to maintain dominance of one racial group over another through systematic oppression and inhuman acts. 

Critics of the Israel-apartheid analogy have long argued that the situation is a temporary, security-driven military occupation, not a system of racial domination. They point to Israel’s own Arab citizens, who have voting rights, as evidence. However, proponents of the apartheid analysis, like Jerusalem-based analyst Nathan Thrall, frame the issue differently. They view the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as one space under ultimate Israeli sovereignty, where roughly 7.5 million Jewish Israelis and 7.5 million Palestinians live under starkly different legal systems and realities. 

“There is one sovereign state, it’s the state of Israel,” Thrall contends. Within that state, he argues, Jewish Israelis enjoy full civil and political rights regardless of whether they live in Tel Aviv or an illegal West Bank settlement. Palestinians, however, are fragmented into a hierarchy of legal statuses with diminished rights: Palestinian citizens of Israel face discrimination; Palestinians in East Jerusalem live under precarious residency rights; Palestinians in the West Bank endure military law; and Palestinians in Gaza exist under a debilitating siege. 

The Machinery of Control: Permits, Roads, and Separate Laws 

The apartheid charge gains its traction from the tangible, everyday systems governing Palestinian life. 

The Permit Regime: Movement for Palestinians is not a right but a privilege granted by permit. To leave Gaza, study in certain areas, work inside Israel, or even visit family in Jerusalem, Palestinians must navigate a labyrinthine Israeli military bureaucracy where approvals are rare and arbitrarily denied. Thrall notes that in the West Bank, hundreds of thousands live under secret travel bans, often discovering them only at a checkpoint. This system fragments Palestinian society, disrupts economic life, and severs familial and social ties. 

A Dual Legal System: In the same geographic space, two people committing the same act face entirely different judicial realities. An Israeli settler in the West Bank is tried in Israel’s civil courts with its robust legal protections. A Palestinian neighboring that settler is tried in an Israeli military court, where conviction rates exceed 99%. This legal schism institutionalizes inequality before the law based on national-ethnic identity. 

Segregated Infrastructure: The landscape itself tells a story of separation. A network of modern, Israeli-only highways connects settlements, often cutting through Palestinian land. Palestinians are barred from these roads, funneled instead onto older, circuitous, and often poorly maintained “fabric of life” roads. This creates a literal and metaphorical landscape where freedom of movement is racially stratified. 

The Tipping Point of International Opinion 

The shift in discourse is significant. Major human rights organizations—B’Tselem (2021), Human Rights Watch (2021), and Amnesty International (2022)—have conducted extensive legal analyses concluding Israel practices apartheid. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a landmark, albeit non-binding, advisory opinion that found Israel’s occupation unlawful and stated its activities amounted to apartheid. 

Perhaps more striking is the erosion of the consensus within Israeli and Jewish diaspora circles. Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, and prominent historian Benny Morris have used the term. Most symbolically, Benjamin Pogrund, a South African anti-apartheid activist who long defended Israel against the label, reversed his position in 2023, citing the policies of Netanyahu’s government. 

The Israeli government and its supporters reject the characterization vehemently, calling it antisemitic and a delegitimization of Israel’s right to exist. They argue it misrepresents a complex national conflict as a racial one and ignores genuine security threats, underscored by the horrors of the October 7, 2023 attacks. Proponents of the apartheid analysis, while unequivocally condemning such violence, view it as a horrific symptom of the enduring cycle of oppression and resistance, not a singular justification for permanent control. 

“Not Stopping, It’s Accelerating”: The Human Dimension 

Beyond legal arguments, the situation is defined by human consequence. In the West Bank, settlement expansion and home demolitions are not slowing but accelerating, with entire Palestinian communities being displaced. As Thrall observes, “When you walk around Tel Aviv or in West Jerusalem, you see the total normalcy… the total ease with which the voters of this country can live with that situation.” This “normalcy” for one group is built upon a foundation of controlled, confined, and often desperate existence for another. 

The Guardian’s reporting from the West Bank details what it calls a “creeping ethnic cleansing,” a gradual, bureaucratic process of making life untenable for Palestinians to force their departure from strategic areas. This is not an explosive, singular event but a slow-motion tragedy of permits denied, homes bulldozed, lands confiscated, and futures foreclosed. 

The Path Ahead: Pressure and Perception 

For those who accept the apartheid analysis, change is unlikely to come from within Israel. The political cost of dismantling the settlement apparatus and granting equal rights is seen as too high for the current electorate. Therefore, they argue, external pressure is essential. 

“We in the west have the power to change their perceptions and to change their priorities,” Thrall states, pointing to tangible levers like suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement or halting arms sales. The debate, then, becomes about what tools the international community is willing to use to match its rhetorical commitments to human rights and international law. 

Ultimately, the growing use of the apartheid label is more than a semantic shift. It is an attempt to redefine the paradigm through which the world views the Israel-Palestine conflict: not as a tragic but intractable dispute between two equal sides, but as a structured system of inequality maintained by one group over another. It asks a piercing question about the future: if a negotiated two-state solution is now functionally impossible, and one state with unequal rights persists indefinitely, what do we call that present reality? For a growing number, the most accurate, painful, and legally precise answer is apartheid. How the world responds to that diagnosis will shape the next chapter of this enduring conflict.