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Every idea and political struggle has a life of its . */ own. It can have a long and fruitful life; it can bear fruit, but it can also die, quickly or gradually. As with human beings, ideas and struggles need energy to sustain their existence. And when the energy disappears, the idea fades away.
Renewed energy in the form of much-needed oxygen was recently received by the two-state solution idea for Israel and Palestine. The idea, which has accompanied us for a number of decades, received a significant boost in the 1990s with the Oslo process, but it has been rapidly declining before our eyes, particularly during the past two years. Despite being an essential part of previous coalition agreements, it was eliminated from the coalition agreement of the current Israeli government.
And then, on Dec. 23, 2016, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, which was accepted by 14 votes in favor out of the 15 members of the Security Council, with one abstention, the United States.
Emergency Aid for the Two-State Solution
At a time when support for a two-state solution was rapidly disappearing, the international community provided emergency aid in the form of Resolution 2334. The resolution demands that Israel cease illegal settlement activity, focus on the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders (a concept which appears eight times in the resolution) and on the future of the "occupied territories" (terminology which appears five times in the resolution). The UNSC resolution makes a clear distinction between the area of the sovereign State of Israel and the area of the territories occupied in 1967, and most importantly it asks (in Item 5) all states in the international community "to distinguish in their relevant dealings, between the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967." This distinction between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) touches upon the holy of holies of the current Israeli government; senior ministers call the occupied West Bank "the heart of the land," and the settlers are the political elite in Israel today.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was furious, of course, about the resolution. His anger was focused mainly on two small countries, New Zealand and Senegal, with which Israel has diplomatic...