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3. Based on statehood, kindly discuss on status of Palestine as a State

Statehood is the idea that a state is recognized as a legal personality, which is an

acknowledgment that an entity is capable of exercising certain rights and being subject to
certain duties under a particular system of law. Legal personalities are subject to international
law, and the states are the predominant actors in international law. First things first, a state can
be defined in many ways. In Oppenheim’s point of view, a state is in proper existence when
people are settled in a territory under its own sovereign government. A state can also be defined
as a political organization of society or the body politic, or more narrowly, the institutions of
government. However, the most accepted source as to the definition of statehood is the
Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States 1993. This agreement signed the
standard definition of a state under international law. Article 1 of The Montevideo Convention is
also known as the declarative theory of statehood, and another theory that is used to define a
state is the constitutive theory.

In order for a state to be recognized as a state, it must fulfil the requirements that are prescribed
under Article 1 of the 1933 Convention. The first one is that the state must have a permanent
population and it means that wandering tribes do not qualify to be a state. Permanent
populations that were stated by the 1933 Convention stated that there must be people linked to
a specific territory on a more or less permanent basis and who can be regarded as its
inhabitants. There is no lower limit to the size of the state population. This means that Palestine
has its own permanent population in its territory. In discussing the status of whether Palestine
has a permanent population, the International Court of Justice observes that the existence of
the people and the population of Palestine is not an issue because its inhabitants are living in
the state itself.

The next requirement would be the defined territory. The control of the territory is the
characteristic that a State should require and it is defined by geographical areas separated by
borderlines from the territories of other States. The sovereignty of the territory establishes the
absolute competence of the State to exercise sovereign authority within its territory and
forbidding foreign governments to exercise other authority within the same territory without
consent. Hence, the delimitation of States boundaries is of crucial importance. Nonetheless, the
frontier of a state does not require absolute certainty as long as that State controls the
identifiable core of the territory whether it is a small or big territory. Referring to the question,

Other than that, statehood requires the existence of a government in control of territory and
permanent population. Governments enable the state to maintain their legal order and avoid
entire dependence on other states for critical decision making. It needs to be highly effective
and can act independently before it can be regarded as a state. However, the requirement of
effective government is not strictly applied in order to establish a state. It does not stop the state
from existing in the case of war or other crises that make the government ineffective. Palestine
has governments and governmental systems, however, some situations have caused their
governments to collapse. Palestine is struggling with Israel, which has resulted in further
conflicts and turned the area into a war zone. In this regard, Palestine does not fulfil the
requirements of a government, but has the right to be considered as a state.

Additionally, in order for Palestine to be a state, it must have the capacity to enter into
relations where a government in the sense of independence and sovereignty to the extent it
can enter into relations with other states. Independence has both factual and legal aspects.
Factually, it is about the physical competence to govern a territory without relying on another
State for guidance. Legal independence implies that no other State has a valid claim to
administer that territory. When legal and factual independence aligns, the route to statehood is
easy. However, Palestine cannot make foreign decisions or enter into foreign relations without
the cooperation of Israel. Again, Palestine does not act autonomously, but rather under the
control of Israel. Therefore, Palestine does not have the capacity to enter into relation.

Furthermore, there is another theory of statehood known as the constitutive theory, which
states that a state or government does not exist unless it is acknowledged as such by other
states. According to the constitutive theory, by recognizing a state, it might become an
international entity bound by international law. Over a hundred states have given Palestine this
status. Crawford maintains that, notwithstanding this, Palestine lacks the quasi-unanimous
support required for the adoption of a specific international law norm. This, he claims, is a
requirement for a state's complete recognition. Nonetheless, the constitutive approach contends
that recognition might complement the provisions of the Montevideo Convention in cases where
a state does not fulfill the standards.