Israel and The Apartheid Analogy - Warnings That Israel Might Become An Apartheid State in The Future

Warnings That Israel Might Become An Apartheid State in The Future

Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that; "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one man, one vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state." Olmert made a similar remark in November 2007 as Prime Minister: "If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished."

When speaking in a national security conference in Israel, Ehud Barak warned that unless Israel makes peace with the Palestinians it will be faced with either a state with no Jewish ­majority or an "apartheid" regime. "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

In 2010, Mick Davis, chairman of the U.K. Jewish community and executive of the Jewish Leadership Council stated that Israel could in the future become an apartheid state unless there was a two-state solution with the Palestinians, "because we then have the majority going to be governed by the minority". However, at the same meeting he also said explicitly "Israel is not today an apartheid state ... Even though we have things that are entirely offensive to us passed in the Knesset, those things come from tactical issues ... and do not represent the mainstream of Israeli society."

The Economist warned in 2005 that if Israel did not withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it would be forced in the future an "impossible choice" of becoming either an apartheid state, or a binational state with Jews as a minority.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor to President Carter, commented that the absence of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "likely to produce a situation which de facto will resemble apartheid".

According to Hirsh Goodman, David Ben-Gurion said on Israeli radio after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War that Israel would become an apartheid state if it did not rid itself of the Palestinian territories and their Arab population as soon as possible.