The A-word reappeared in Israel this week. The country’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, approved a scheme that would have seen a crude form of segregation of Jews and Arabs in the West Bank, with Palestinians banned from using Israeli-run bus services in the occupied territory.

At the last moment the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, intervened and overturned Ya’alon’s decision, suspending the scheme – but not before a collective howl of protest from Israeli opposition leaders and human rights groups. The leader of the leftwing Meretz party, Zehava Gal-On, could not have been clearer: “This is how apartheid looks,” she said. “There is no better or nicer way to put it.”

The charge is not new. Two Israeli former PMs have warned that if the country continues on its current path, it will become the successor to apartheid South Africa. Some campaigners claim that point has already arrived – that Israel is a racist, pitiless oppressor of Palestinians, killing them en masse whenever it wants to, that it is an apartheid state.

There are few charges more grave. I should know: during 26 years as a journalist in South Africa I investigated and reported the evil that was apartheid. I saw Nelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison.

I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid.

The Arabs of Israel are full citizens. Crucially, they have the vote and Israeli Arab MPs sit in parliament. An Arab judge sits on the country’s highest court; an Arab is chief surgeon at a leading hospital; an Arab commands a brigade of the Israeli army; others head university departments. Arab and Jewish babies are born in the same delivery rooms, attended by the same doctors and nurses, and mothers recover in adjoining beds. Jews and Arabs travel on the same trains, taxis and – yes – buses. Universities, theatres, cinemas, beaches and restaurants are open to all.

However, Israeli Arabs – Palestinian citizens of Israel – do suffer discrimination, starting with severe restrictions on land use. Their generally poorer school results mean lower rates of entry into higher education, which has an impact on jobs and income levels. Arab citizens of Israel deeply resent Israel’s “law of return” whereby a Jew anywhere in the world can immigrate to Israel but Arabs cannot. Some might argue that the Jewish majority has the right to impose such a policy, just as Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states have the right not to allow Christians as citizens. But it’s a troubling discrimination.

A major factor causing inequity is that most Israeli Arabs do not serve in the army. While they are spared three years’ compulsory, and dangerous, conscription for men (two years for women) and annual reserve duty that continues into their 40s, they do not receive post-army benefits in housing and university study.

Everything is open to change in a tangled society in which lots of people have grievances

This is more complicated than at first sight. Most Arabs in Israel are Muslim and only a few take up the option of alternative national service with the same pay as non-combat soldiers. However, Druze Arabs have always been conscripted, exactly like Jews, and many hold high ranks in the army; Bedouin Arabs are not conscripted but volunteer.

How does that compare with the old South Africa? Under apartheid, every detail of life was subject to discrimination by law. Black South Africans did not have the vote. Skin colour determined where you were born and lived, your job, your school, which bus, train, taxi and ambulance you used, which park bench, lavatory and beach, whom you could marry, and in which cemetery you were buried.

Israel is not remotely like that. Everything is open to change in a tangled society in which lots of people have grievances, including Mizrahi Jews (from the Middle East) or Jews of Ethiopian origin. So anyone who equates Israel and apartheid is not telling the truth.

So much for Israel “proper”, inside the Green Line determined by war. On the West Bank, the present story starts with the 1967 six-day war: Israel believed Egyptian and Syrian threats to invade and struck first. Jordan’s King Hussein leapt in and attacked Israel. To general astonishment, Israel defeated Jordan’s famed Arab Legion, evicting it from Jerusalem and the West Bank (the Gaza Strip also featured – but Gaza is a story in itself).

Not only did Israelis view the conquered West Bank as a vital buffer against another Jordanian attack, but religious beliefs came to the fore – including those that saw this territory as the ancient heartland, the biblical Judea and Samaria given by God to the Jews and which had to be retained.

Settlements have been built and today house some 400,000 Jews, plus another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. Large numbers are there for the clean air and good living, but messianic zeal is at the heart of it. Settlers are opposed by many Israelis; but they enjoy support, and the government funnels millions of dollars to them, legally and illegally.

Israel is in military occupation of the West Bank. Day after day the actions needed to maintain it debase Palestinian victims as well as their Israeli occupiers. It means checkpoints, late-night raids and detentions and killings, and administrative cruelties in regulating people’s lives. Palestinians resist and fight back, attacking both soldiers and settlers; sometimes that has seen them undermine their own morality through suicide bombings against civilians.

This is occupation. It is a tyranny. It is wrong and must end. The point does not need to be embellished. Dragging in the emotive word “apartheid” is not only incorrect but creates confusion and distracts from the main issue.

What is often misunderstood is that West Bank Palestinians are not Israeli citizens and they need permission to cross the border. About 92,000 legally enter Israel to work each day, with another estimated 5,000 coming in illegally. They pass through the security barrier, part-wall but mainly fences. Originally planned as a means of blocking suicide bombers, Israel has twisted the barrier’s purpose to grab land from Palestinians. That is exploitative and damaging. But calling it the “apartheid wall”, as critics do, is untrue propaganda.

Of course Israel isn’t perfect, despite its many and wondrous achievements since 1948. However, for critics it’s not enough to denounce its ills and errors: instead, they exaggerate and distort and present an ugly caricature far distant from reality.

So why is the apartheid accusation pushed so relentlessly, especially by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement? I believe those campaigners want Israel declared an apartheid state so it becomes a pariah, open to the world’s severest sanctions. Many want not just an end to the occupation but an end to Israel itself.

Tragically, some well-intentioned, well-meaning people in Britain and other countries are falling for the BDS line without realising what they are actually supporting. BDS campaigners and other critics need to be questioned: Why do they single out Israel, above all others, for a torrent of false propaganda? Why is Israel the only country in the world whose very right to existence is challenged in this way?