@JoeBruno,
The comparison is specious if it based on laws or behaviors existing with the so-called Occupied Territories. Someone like CI approves of that term because it suggests Israel is an invading aggressor. He may be very well correct, but if he is, it blows the apartheid theory out of water.
South Africa established apartheid to segregate it's citizens by race or skin color and while there may very well have been an element of security inherent in the practice it was based, for the most part, on a belief that the group being segregated were inferior to South Africans with white skin.
By now, I wouldn't be surprised if Israelis viewed Palestinians as a lesser people, but such a consideration would be born more from the latter's constant attempts to kill them rather than any perceived genetic or "racial" inferiority.
The policies that Israel directs towards Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are motivated by security concerns not racial hatred. These policies may or may not be ill considered, and ultimately unjust, but they do not constitute apartheid. The use of the term by critics of Israel is a deliberate attempt to put them in the same category as the former white dominated South Africa which was almost universally loathed.
From what I have seen, the charge of Israeli apartheid is focused primarily on it's policies in the Occupied Territories. In order for the charge to stick there has to be evidence that segregation based on ethnicity/race/religion exists within the state of Israel as respects all of it's citizens. It may be that such polices exist, but I'm not aware of them.