Is Israel truly an apartheid state?

The Democracy Index which was surveyed in Israel in 2010 by the Israel Democracy Institute provided the following major findings:

• 81% of the general public agrees with the basic assertion that "democracy is not a perfect regime"
• 55% supports less attention paid to the principles of democracy & greater focus on public order
• 72% of the general public feel Israel is being harmed as a democracy by increasing gaps in society
• 55% think that greater resources should be allocated to Jewish communities than to Arab ones
• 86% believe that critical decisions for the state should be taken by a Jewish majority
• 72% of ultra-Orthodox Jews are opposed to equality of rights between Jews and Arabs
• 65% of religious Jews are opposed to equality of rights between Jews and Arabs
• 51% of traditional Jews are opposed to equality of rights between Jews and Arabs
• 50% disagree that it is important to allow non-Zionist parties to take part in elections
• 53% maintain that the state is entitled to encourage Arabs to emigrate from Israel
• 51.5% Jews agree only new Jewish immigrants should automatically receive Israeli citizenship
• 79% religious Jews agree only new Jewish immigrants should automatically receive Israeli citizenship
• 88% ultra-Orthodox Jews agree only new Jewish immigrants should automatically receive citizenship
• 67% Jews feel first-degree Arab relatives should not be allowed into Israel under family unification rubric

The following article may also shed some light on the current situation within Israeli territory, and one can make up their own mind.

"Israel’s apartheid policies can best be exemplified by its treatment of the Palestinians living within Israel proper. Israel discriminates against its Palestinian minority—20 percent of the total population—by corralling them in ghettos, tying social benefits to military service in the Israel Defense Force, denying jobs to those without military ID, allowing landlords to rent to Jews only, effecting unequal marriage laws, and denying certain purchasing rights of property in the country to non-Jews. Furthermore, municipal services such as street lighting and trash collection are only provided in Jewish areas, and Jewish schools receive four times as much federal funding as Arab schools, which are often kept segregated. According to Amnesty International, 8,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, which is made possible by Israel’s 1979 Emergency Law that states individuals can be held without charge “if the Israeli police or army find that ‘reasons of state security or public security require that a particular person be detained.’” Even Israel’s identification card system is segregated, as markers are used to distinguish Jewish citizens of Israel from Palestinian, Christian, or Muslim citizens. Most recently, Israeli legislators are working to remove Arabic as one of its official national languages, even though it is the native language of the land. They are also trying to pass a law that criminalizes Israeli citizens for supporting the Palestinian Civil Society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel and speaking out against apartheid.

Israel is an apartheid state according to legal definition, but it doesn’t take legal expertise of international law to understand that what is happening to the Palestinians is anything but apartheid­—it just takes a simple examination of the situation. Hoping to blur the lines of ethics, some might like to call the conditions complicated... Racism, colonialism, and settler-states are not complicated and in fact have existed systematically for many years."

[http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2011/02/27/israel-practices-apartheid]

Another report describes a specific Arab village in Israel as follows:

Baqa al-Gharbiyya, Israel – This sleepy agricultural village, an hour’s drive northeast from Tel Aviv, feels worlds apart from Israel’s commercial capital. Garbage lines many of the narrow, rutted streets, symptoms of the lower level of government funding bestowed upon the town; unemployed men mill about, complaining that Israel’s policies have hurt the local economy.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hard-right foreign minister, has proposed annexing this and other Arab villages to a future Palestinian state. Their inhabitants would be stripped of their Israeli citizenship unless they were willing to leave their land and swear a “loyalty oath” to the state.

His plan is deeply unpopular here and in nearby villages.

[http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011124105622779946.html]

Another Al-Jazeera report talks about the Arab village, stating the following:

Baqa al-Gharbiyya used to be just Baqa, a name still used by many residents. The creation of the state of Israel split the village in half, with Baqa al-Gharbiyya on the west side of the 1948 armistice line and Baqa al-Sharqiyya on the east.

Residents regularly travelled back and forth between the two until six years ago, when the Israeli separation barrier was built. Several streets in the villages now dead-end at an eight-metre-high concrete wall topped with barbed wire.

Those who live in Baqa al-Gharbiyya face what they, and many Israeli and international human rights groups, describe as systemic prejudice. Israeli Arabs routinely face discrimination when applying for jobs, and their towns and villages often receive a lower level of government funding than Jewish communities.

In its 2009 report, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel described the discrimination faced by Arabs as "open and explicit", and warned that the government is threatening "their most basic rights – to equality, education and employment – as well as their very citizenship".

Israelis use a lot of syntactic ambiguity to deny the validity of the reports above which leaves a lot to be desired. In general, reports like these are not specifically anti-Israeli. They are reports against discrimination. Whoever is responsible is academic.

If we are willing to criticize these reports and the people that speak up against these acts, a more relevant question to ask is why this discrimination occurs in the first place? The conspiracy that people "just hate Jews" is completely fabricated and part of the propaganda that is fed to the West to have them believe Israelis must "defend" themselves from a potential removal of their own rights. What that basically means is an almost pre-emptive discrimination "just in case" it happens to "us".

Ultimately this mistreatment and discrimination falls under the category of apartheid. By definition it is the minority ruling over the majority based on race and ethnicity without the opportunity of equal rights. That is exactly the system Israel adopts... unless of course Israelis believe that an Arab could potentially run for Prime Minister of Israel one day.