The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been and always will be a powder keg.

This month, Palestinians will take the unprecedented step of applying for full-state membership to the United Nations. Currently, they hold non-state observer status. While this upends the peace process, this course of action is the best way forward for negotiations and the first step toward achieving a lasting peace.

Israelis argue that instead of promoting peace, this weakens it. Rather than negotiations resuming after the UN accepts Palestine as a state, negotiations, they say, would stall, and tensions rise between Israel and Palestine. Israelis argue that this amounts to a unilateral declaration, and Palestinians ought to simply negotiate.

Frankly, the idea that taking an application for membership in the U.N. is unilateral is laughable. One doesn’t see a much more multilateral organization than the U.N., which contains every country on the planet in some fashion. And Palestinians know the United Nations recognizing them as a state on the borders set out in U.N. Resolution 194 (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) does not mean they instantly have a state and Israel will withdraw from the occupation.

Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president, said he would “happily resume negotiations with Israel after returning from New York City.” But this seems to be the only way to really push the reset button on the conflict.

Palestinians argue, rather convincingly, that instead of destroying the two-state solution — which Israel claims Palestinians are doing with this resolution — they are preserving it. As an example, they use the expansion of settlements in occupied Jerusalem.

No country, including the United States, has an embassy in Jerusalem. In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, denying citizenship to its residents, leaving them without passport or nationality.

This expansion of settlements means the future Palestinian state is quickly shrinking. Israel will insist on keeping the largest of its settlement blocs in the West Bank, while dismantling smaller ones. The largest of the blocs surround Jerusalem. At a panel of former Israeli security officials in Washington, D.C., this summer, Shaul Arieli, former head of the Interim Peace Agreement, noted that 75 to 85 percent of settlers could stay in Israeli territory by swapping only three to four percent of the land.

At this same panel, Alon Pinkas, former Israeli consul general in New York, explained the curious behavior of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In late July, Netanyahu asked his national security adviser for a way to nullify the Oslo Accords. It’s strange that the Israeli responsible for peace is searching for a way to dismantle it.

Seen in this context, the Palestinians’ claim that they want to preserve the two-state solution makes a lot more sense. Declaring a state for Palestine and a state for Israel all but makes certain that Palestinians will see a future state.

In Washington, I had the privilege of meeting Maen Areikat, ambassador to the United States from the Palestine Liberation Organization. He stressed the Palestinian desire to live side by side, in peace and security with Israel. Yet he became annoyed when he reached the subject of settlements. He denounced efforts by the Israelis to de-legitimize the peace process by building more settlements, which could only lead to a one-state solution.

Yet, as Pinkas said at the event above, “We are coming to a time where Palestinians say, ‘You want us, you have us,'” accompanied by the principle of one man, one vote and peaceful demonstrations. “What will we do then?” he asked. Pinkas envisions a possible future where Israel must make a terrible choice. Choice one: Give the Palestinians full and equal rights as Israeli citizens and lose the Jewish nature of Israel. Choice two: Institute apartheid and give up democracy.

Fortunately, it hasn’t come to that – yet. This is why the Palestinian initiative at the United Nations is so important. It creates an internationally recognized pair of states. Instead of vetoing the application, the United States should support it. At the least, our country ought to support the non-member observer state status which the U.N. General Assembly will grant.

Everyone seems to recognize that everyone wants peace. No one can seem to agree on a clear and complete definition. That will come through negotiations, but the first step is this important move at the United Nations. The excitement ahead of the vote is palpable, even if its consequences aren’t immediate. For the future of Middle Eastern peace, let’s hope the Palestinian territories are recognized as a state later this month.