On December 23, the United Nations Security Council passed an astounding resolution against Israel’s illegal measures in the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories, with particular focus on the settlements.

To everyone’s amazement, Resolution 2334 was adopted almost unanimously, with 14 council members voting in favour and the 15th, the US delegation abstaining.

The resolution fell like a bombshell on the Israeli government and its supporters for two reasons: the use of very strong and clear language; the fact that the US did not veto the resolution as it was expected to do, in line with an American tradition of vetoing such resolutions to protect Israel from any UN action.

At a time when Israel believed the settlements it has been illegally building on occupied Palestinian territories since 1967, as well as its other actions, in Jerusalem, in particular, had become established, accepted and irreversible facts on the ground, despite previous UN resolutions rejecting them, last week’s resolution shattered this smug conviction, not only by reaffirming all its relevant previous condemnations, dating back to 1967, but also by issuing this fresh categorical denunciation and stern rejection of all Israeli occupation measures and by ordering their immediate cessation.

Being “guided by the purposes and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations” and by “reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force” — a principle included in the 1967 Security Council Resolution 242 — Resolution 2334 annuls, in no uncertain terms, all the vague language that has been circulating for decades by the peace process industry about “territorial swap”, a euphemism for allowing Israel to annex the illegal settlements.