Over the last few decades, comparisons have continuously been drawn between Israel and its policies and the system of South African apartheid. Certain events in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have given impulses to the use of this analogy, such as the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory after the Six-Day war in 1967, the fragmentation of the West Bank after the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, and more recently the announcement of plans by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for de jure annexation of parts of the West Bank. While the analogy is usually employed to refer to Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), an increasing trend has become to depict the Israeli regime as a whole, ruling over Israel proper and the OPT, as an apartheid regime, which can possibly be explained by some recent controversial events.

Many important political figures and international organizations have used the analogy to criticize Israel and its policies in Israel and/or the OPT. There are, however, also many who have strongly rejected the analogy and an interesting debate has emerged around this topic. Several studies have been published which have analyzed the use of the analogy by individual actors, but studies that have analyzed the broader debate seem to be scarce to non-existent. Therefore, this paper aims at providing an overview and understanding of the broader debate around the analogy between Israel and its policies and South African apartheid. The research is conducted through an analysis of arguments within the public debate, which will include publications and statements of individuals in the media, NGOs, and IGOs, and political actors. In doing so, the debate will be analyzed on different levels of society.

In order to make sense and draw conclusions from the debate, the method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used, which is a theory that studies discourse within texts and considers it to be a form of social practice, thereby helping to provide deeper insights into the debate. This study has revealed that the Israel apartheid analogy principally serves as a strategy of mobilization and delegitimization and that it is often either supported or rejected by making appeals to notions of generic or historical apartheid, victimhood, demonization, self-glorification, and historical claims. Both proponents and opponents of the analogy refer to these notions in a manner that fits their own narrative and this often results in two incompatible accounts of reality which consequently impedes substantial dialogue. While the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may explain certain discourse and attitudes in the debate, the debate itself also confirms and normalizes the tensions that constitute this political reality, which demonstrates that this research has political relevance.