Anywho, back to Palestine & not the propaganda circus ‘sailing’ towards it.
The long-established “land for peace” legal framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, established by UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the Oslo Accords, provides that Palestinian statehood can only come as part of a negotiated solution to the conflict, in which Israel receives peace in return. Recognizing Palestine as a state under the current circumstances would torpedo that framework.
The international legal criteria for statehood require that a nascent state have a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) a government with effective control over that population and territory; and d) capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Four criteria for statehood are listed in the 1933 Montevideo Convention. Palestine can justifiably lay claim to two: a permanent population (although the war in Gaza has put this at enormous risk) and the capacity to enter into international relations - Dr Zomlot is proof of the latter.
But it doesn't yet fit the requirement of a "defined territory".
With no agreement on final borders (and no actual peace process), it's difficult to know with any certainty what is meant by Palestine.
The European Council (EC) added several additional non-binding criteria in its 1991
guidelines for recognizing new states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. These include prospective states providing their citizens “the rule of law, democracy, and human rights.” Hmmm…
For the Palestinians themselves, their longed-for state consists of three parts: East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. All were conquered by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War from…not Palestine.
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Even a cursory glance at a map shows where the problems begin. The West Bank and Gaza Strip have been geographically separated by Israel for three quarters of a century, since Israel's independence in 1948.
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Then there's a fourth criteria laid down in the Montevideo convention that is needed to recognise statehood: a functioning government. Back in 1994, an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) led to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority (known simply as the Palestinian Authority or PA), which exercised partial civil control over Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
But since a bloody conflict in 2007 between Hamas and the main PLO faction Fatah, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been ruled by two rival governments: Hamas in Gaza and the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, whose president is Mahmoud Abbas, who’s into the twentieth year of his four year elected term at this point.
That's 77 years of geographical separation and 18 years of political division: a long time for the West Bank and Gaza Strip to drift apart.
Palestinian politics has ossified in the meantime, leaving most Palestinians cynical about their leadership and pessimistic about the chances of any kind of internal reconciliation, let alone progress towards statehood.
The last presidential and parliamentary elections were in 2006, which means that no Palestinian under the age of 36 has ever voted in the West Bank or Gaza.
"That we haven't had elections in all of this time just boggles the mind," says Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu. "We need a new leadership."

So an election then?
A recent opinion poll by the West Bank based Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found that 50% of Palestinians would choose Barghouti as president, well ahead of Abbas, who has held the position since 2005.
en.wikipedia.org
Even before the Gaza war, Benjamin Netanyahu's opposition to Palestinian statehood was unambiguous. In February 2024, he said that, "Everyone knows that I am the one who for decades blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence."
Despite international calls for the Palestinian Authority to resume control over Gaza, Netanyahu insists that there will be no role for the PA in Gaza's future governance, arguing that Abbas has not condemned the Hamas attacks of 7 October, but boys will be boys, etc…
One thing is certain: if a Palestinian state does emerge, Hamas will not be running it. A declaration drawn up in July at the end of a three day conference sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia declared that "Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian authority."
The "New York declaration" was endorsed by all Arab states and subsequently adopted by 142 members of the UN General Assembly. For its part, Hamas says it's ready to hand over authority in Gaza to an independent administration of technocrats, but have they?
With the president approaching 90 years of age and another possible candidate in jail, finding the right leadership would be a challenge
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