The State of Israel and the Apartheid Regime of South Africa in Comparative Perspective

With increasing frequency comparisons are being drawn between the situation of the Palestinian people both in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel with the system of Apartheid imposed on the indigenous peoples of South Africa by the Nationalist Government in 1948. The object of this essay is to explore the analogy and test its merits and shortcomings. The essay explores the legal structure of the Apartheid system and compares it to that of the state of Israel and the legal framework under which Palestinians live in the occupied territories. It concludes that whilst the term Apartheid might seem attractive and adequate for descriptive purposes rendering the plight of the Palestinians more familiar ultimately there is a gap between the appearance and reality of the two experiences.