GAZA IS THE WEST BANK:

Probably the closest the Israel-Palestine conflict ever came to a resolution was these two maps presented by Israel and the Palestinian Authority at a 2008 summit hosted by Condoleezza Rice in Annapolis. Conceptually, these maps both show the same thing: Israel annexes some settlements and, in exchange, gives the Palestinians some sparsely populated land.

The proposals obviously are not identical. Israel was trying to minimize the number of settlements that would need to be evacuated and the PA was trying to maximize the contiguity of the West Bank. In the Israeli proposal, for example, the desire to annex the large block of settlements east of Jerusalem creates some very awkward transportation logistics for the connections between Ramallah and al-Quds and Bethlehem. Annexing Ariel further north also sort of strands Qalqilya.

But conceptually, it's a common framework, and at these talks the Palestinians were willing to essentially give up on the Right of Return.

No agreement was reached, though, and the day after he made this proposal, Ehud Olmert was forced from office by a corruption scandal. The religious party, Shas, that was part of his coalition disliked this proposal. And at the subsequent election, even though Olmert's successor as the head of Kadima got one more seat that Bibi Netanyahu's Likud, it was Likud that formed the government thanks to Shas' preference for Netanyahu and to the strength of other right-wing parties. Since that time, Israel has mostly been led by Likud-centric Netanyahu governments. And Netanyahu's coalition partners have become increasingly right-wing during this span, while the Israeli left has collapsed to the point where the last non-Netanyahu coalition heavily featured Naftali Bennett, who is right-wing on the Palestinian issue.

All this time since Annapolis, it's not just that military occupation of the West Bank continues, it's that the footprint of the settlements has been growing -- and is subsidized -- while Israel denies Palestinians' building permits. The upshot of this is that if you re-ran the basic concepts that both sides were working with at Annapolis, it would be much harder today. Drawing an equivalent of Olmert's proposal would leave the West Bank with even less contiguity, and finding adequate terrain for land swaps would be harder. And drawing an equivalent of Abbas's proposal would require even larger population transfers.

And to be clear, this isn't some kind of accident.

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni made the case to the voters that Netanyahu and endless settlement expansion would make a two-state solution harder and harder and generate more and more global efforts to delegitimize Israel. I said this a lot during Barack Obama's first term, lots of liberal Jews in the diaspora said it, lots of liberal Jews in Israel said it, Obama and his team said it. The Israeli voters just disagreed. Netanyahu has never, going back to his first term as prime minister, agreed with the idea of a two-state solution, and his coalition partners have been increasingly committed to driving Palestinians out of the West Bank so it can be seized by Israel.

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