Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett's live interview with London-based Sky News on Thursday turned into a heated exchange when he lashed out at the broadcaster for insinuating that Israel is an apartheid state.

"It's a vulgar lie," Bennet said in response to the claim that some people draw parallels between Israel's policies toward its minority Arab population and West Bank Palestinians and South Africa's long-defunct apartheid regime.

"I don't see women being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and I know a number of Muslim states that stone and harass homosexuals, while the Syrian regime is slaughtering its own people, so to treat Israel as an apartheid state is a vulgar lie, and I don't accept this approach," he said in a live video link.

Bennett, leader of the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party and a senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, gave a series of interviews to foreign media outlets throughout the day to explain Israel's position on the escalating violence in east Jerusalem and recent attacks by Palestinians, his office said in a press release.

Sky News' implication that Israeli policies are reminiscent of apartheid-era human rights abuses came after Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon's announcement earlier this week of a decision to ban Palestinian laborers from riding buses that serve Jewish residents of West Bank settlements. Ya'alon said the measure was to avert the threat of a potential terror attack.

When the interviewer continued hurling accusations at Bennett, the minister retorted that "you (British media) should be praising Israel, which is in a very difficult situation and is fighting in the world of al-Qaida, Hamas, and the Islamic State."

"The fact that you are sitting in London and calling us apartheid is inconceivable. We're fighting your wars. Make no mistake, if Islamist terrorism will traverse Israel, it will strike London and it is already doing so. They killed a soldier in London, and we expect the world to help us instead of calling us an apartheid state, or any other inconceivable name," he said.

On the recent terror attacks in Jerusalem, which claimed the lives of an Israeli infant and a woman last week and the attempted assassination of a right-wing activist on Wednesday, Bennett claimed that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has decided "to intentionally incite against Israel and create a new wave of terror."