The “apartheid wall,” “apartheid roads,” colonization, administrative arrests, travel restrictions, land confiscations and house demolitions are the clay apartheid comparisons are made of, and cannot be hidden or denied, for as long as Israel continues with the status quo.

Military occupation comes with checkpoints, antiterrorist barriers, military courts, armed soldiers and tanks. That’s the reality, no matter what your politics, and just the ammunition the Palestinians and their supporters need in their new war.

In the coming weeks, the United States is expected to put forward a framework for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry. The Palestinians have said that if the talks fail to produce an agreement, they will take the battle against Israel and for their independence to the International Criminal Court and the United Nations and its various organizations, and fight for sanctions and boycotts, which they hope will force Israel, like apartheid South Africa before it, to its knees. As South Africa learned in the 1980s, possessing nuclear weapons may deter foes on the battlefield, but it doesn’t help you win a propaganda war.

Unfortunately, Israel is doing almost everything it can to help its opponents achieve their goal. Instead of focusing on peace talks, Israel continuously signals its intention to build more settlement housing, most recently on Jan. 10, when plans for 1,400 new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank were announced. Instead of welcoming Eritrean and Sudanese refugees seeking asylum — the way that a former Likud Party prime minister, Menachem Begin, did in 1977 with the Vietnamese boat people, saying they reminded him of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust — Israel is confining today’s asylum-seekers to a camp in the desert, providing reams of footage to those who want to prove Israel is a racist society.

And it didn’t help when, on Dec. 15, a ministerial committee approved a bill that would impose heavy, punitive taxes on groups like B’Tselem, which tracks alleged human rights violations in the occupied territories, and Adalah, the legal center for minority rights in Israel.

As anyone who has bought a “Gucci” bag in a Bangkok market can tell you, it’s all in the label. And the apartheid label is beginning to stick — fair or not. It carries with it huge consequences for Israel, which the country’s inward-looking leaders seem impervious to. They have yet to understand that on this new battlefield, tanks don’t count and the use of force, sure to be televised, plays into the hands of the enemy. It’s a war Israel cannot win unless it makes peace.