Israel does not recognise the presence of its troops and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occupation, and when former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon used the O-word to describe what was happening in Gaza, he was forced to rephrase by his own attorney-general.

If Israel recognised that the West Bank and Gaza were occupied, rather than "disputed", two things would follow. First, the Geneva Convention would apply fully to those territories, making it illegal for settler families to move into them and for thousands of Palestinian men, women and children to be taken out to face indefinite "security detention" in Israeli jails. Second, instead of simply talking about a "viable Palestinian state", Israel would have formally acknowledged the existence of a separate entity west of the River Jordan.