Is Palestine a State? What It Means When Countries Say It Is

Ireland, Norway and Spain have said they will recognize Palestine as a state, breaking from a consensus within Western Europe and the US that the Palestinians should achieve statehood through negotiations with Israel. Already, the great majority of countries in the world — around 140 of them — recognize a Palestinian state. The declarations have symbolic value for the Palestinians, and they serve to diplomatically isolate Israel, whose government opposes a Palestinian state. But they don’t mean that the Palestinians have a state, in the full meaning of the word.

Under the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which established the conventional definition of a state under international law, such an entity must meet four qualifications. The West Bank and Gaza Strip meet the first one — a permanent population — but fall somewhat short on the other three: a government, defined territorial boundaries, and an ability to enter into agreements. Under the peace agreements of the early 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an entity called the Palestinian Authority was tasked with limited Palestinian self-rule, but it has never had control over all of the West Bank. It lost control of the Gaza Strip entirely to the militant Islamist group Hamas in 2007. Since then, there were effectively two Palestinian governing entities. And the Israelis continued to control Gaza’s airspace and maritime territory.