The Gaza Strip and West Bank cannot agree on a government so who should the UN recognise, Hamas or Fatah?  If the Palestinian people cannot agree on who speaks for them then what is the rest of the world to make of the situation? One of the defining attributes of statehood is a single, stable government that can, in some meaningful way, be said to have control over the lands within that designated territory. This was set out in article 1 of the Montevideo convention that a state should possess “a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c ) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.” [i] Only the permanent population criteria is unequivocally met by Palestine.  The Palestinian Authority can barely be said to speak for itself let alone the people it claims to represent. By recognizing one faction over another, the UN would be taking sides in an internal, domestic affair. Abbas is not asking the UN to recognize Palestine, he’s asking it to recognize him rather than Hamas.  [i] International Conference of American States, ‘Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States’, 26 December 1933,