In June 2009, in a speech at Bar-Ilan University, Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his support for a two-state solution. There were conditions, of course, but if the Palestinians relinquished their weapons, renounced the right of return, and recognized Israel’s right to exist, he would give them their state. Did he mean it? Probably not, though the question isn’t especially interesting. Netanyahu’s politics are a weather vane: they speak more to the direction of travel in Israeli politics than to the contents of his conscience. If you want to know where Israel is at, look to him.

For anyone wondering where Israel is now, Netanyahu recently provided an answer. Speaking on an Israeli news program in the final few days of his election campaign, he vowed that were he to win a fifth term, he would begin the formal annexation of the West Bank, territory that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Some in the media interpreted this as proof of the demise of the two-state solution, but for those on the ground, annexation would merely confirm what has been obvious for some time: that in every meaningful sense, the West Bank is already part of Israel.

In the ten years between Bar-Ilan and this election there have been over one hundred thousand new settlers in the occupied territories, taking the overall population to somewhere in the region of six hundred thousand (counting Palestinian East Jerusalem). The Green Line, which ostensibly demarcates the West Bank from Israel proper, is increasingly blurred, occluded in law as well as by the sheer accumulation of facts on the ground. It’s no longer so easy to tell where “democracy” ends and occupation begins: everyone agrees that Tel Aviv is part of Israel, but what about Ma’ale Adumim (population forty thousand), a settlement ten minutes east of Jerusalem? Israel recognizes no difference in the rights and duties of their residents — both must serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF); both were able to vote in last week’s election. The large settlement blocs are now regarded as immutable, and the prospect of their evacuation as faintly ridiculous.