Joshua Keating at PASSPORT ("A Blog By The Editors Of Foreign Policy") makes a crucial distinction that, in our overly legalistic and litigious society, is lost on many.
Money quote(s):
"(T)he impending U.N. General Assembly vote recognizing the Palestinian state will be illegitimate, as Palestine doesn't meet international law's minimum standards for nationhood"
That's not Mr. Keating's position, by the way; he's just re-stating another's argument.
"I don't think this is a particularly strong case for supporters of Israel to make. Montevideo is a rather quaint set of criteria with little actual relevance in the Calvinball world of contemporary sovereignty disputes. This is doubly true when it comes to U.N. recognition."
Calvinball? Rather fizbin.
"U.N. member states come into being not because they meet an objective standard for nationhood. As I've written before, if that were true, the Palestinian state would probably have been admitted long before South Sudan. Countries become member states after two-thirds of the General Assembly votes for them and the Security Council approves. It's a political process, not a legal one, and wishing it away with a technicality is unlikely to be effective." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
Bear in mind also that, UN membership aside, what makes a nation-state is being a nation-state; nothing more, nothing less. Recognition by others, even the UN, is nice and all, but only dispositive if you thing the UN is some sort of world authority or something.
