Friday, August 05, 2011

The Palestinians' Imaginary State

Steven J. Rosen is the director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum.

He asks in The Palestinians' Imaginary State published in Foreign Policy whether Palestine really qualifies for Statehood?

According to the prevailing legal standard, the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, a "state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states." Both the Hamas-controlled Palestinian entity in Gaza and the rival Fatah-governed Palestinian entity in the West Bank can be said to meet all four of these criteria of the law of statehood. The one on which the United Nations will vote does not.

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