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Notes -
France and Hungary, and most other European countries, let their citizens living outside the country vote. I used to have a friend who was born in the United States to a French mother and (at the time I knew him) had never lived in France his whole life - but he was still regularly voting in French elections.
Would you say that French voting law is based on apartheid, because they let him vote but not me?
Now, of course, there is a difference: France does not have military bases on American soil and does not have any oversight over the American government. But France didn't let Germans vote in 1946, either, even as they were maintaining a literal military occupation over part of Germany. Of course, that was more obviously justified than the Israeli powers over the Palestinian government - but even if you argue the Israeli example isn't justified, it remains at least "an argument... that is not de facto apartheid driven."
The argument following those admissions is that either Israel is an apartheid state because they don't intend to ever return sovereignty to the Palestinians. Which is what has been the de facto state of affairs for decades. And no one has any reason to believe otherwise.
Or Israel is placing Palestine under a prolonged illegal occupation. Be that the discrimination, illegal settlements and de facto annexation or whatever else. In either case there is nothing positive for Israel here.
But that's the argument: Its not apartheid, it's illegal occupation. Fine, say that. But the argument is not 'actually it's not apartheid when we do it because we rewrote the laws so the words don't line up 1:1 with South African law'.
Yes! I'm happy to talk about the prolonged Israeli occupation of Palestine, now that we're using the right terms so that discussion can get somewhere rather than getting sidetracked about matters such as election laws internal to Israel!
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