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When Keir Starmer announced that the UK would move toward recognising a Palestinian state — contingent on a ceasefire, Israeli cooperation, and long-term peace talks — it signalled a shift in foreign policy*.

But a group of senior legal figures has responded with a warning: recognition may breach international law.

Their argument is that Palestine doesn’t meet the criteria for statehood under the 1933 Montevideo Convention — a treaty the UK never signed, but whose principles these lawyers claim now form part of customary international law.

According to that convention, a state must have four attributes: a defined territory, a permanent population, a functioning government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

In a letter to the Attorney General, Lords Collins of Mapesbury and Pannick KC — among others — argue that Palestine fails on all four counts.

It has no fixed borders, a divided leadership between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and no unified government capable of diplomacy.

Therefore, they say, recognition would “manipulate international law for reasons of political expedience.”

But this argument — for all its technical polish — is deeply flawed.

It is not merely legalistic – it is profoundly cynical.

A legal standard weaponised by occupation

It is the effects of military occupation, territorial annexation, blockade, and decades of systemic fragmentation that prevent Palestine from meeting the Montevideo criteria.

To hold Palestinians to the standard of statehood while denying them the very conditions necessary to meet that standard is not legal reasoning — it is circular logic designed to perpetuate statelessness.

Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, its blockade of Gaza, and its active suppression of Palestinian political unity are not accidents. They are deliberate policies.

To then point to the resulting lack of a “functioning government” or “defined borders” as a reason to deny Palestinian statehood is, in effect, to let the occupying power write the legal rules for its victims.

The Montevideo Convention was never intended to be a barrier against liberation.

It was meant to codify the conditions under which emerging nations could take their place on the international stage — not to entrench permanent limbo for those deliberately prevented from doing so.

Statehood is a political act — and always has been

Recognition of statehood has never been a purely legal matter. It is a political act.

Israel itself was recognised in 1948 in the absence of fixed borders, amid active conflict, and before the establishment of many core state institutions.

South Sudan was recognised shortly after emerging from civil war.

Kosovo was welcomed by Western powers despite intense contestation of its legal status.

The point is this: the law does not demand perfection. It demands intent, capacity, and the good faith pursuit of governance and diplomacy.

Palestine — via the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, and even through decades of diplomatic recognition from more than 140 countries — has consistently shown this intent.

The only actors who have not done so are those actively working to prevent Palestinian sovereignty.

The Montevideo Convention is a blueprint, not a barrier

If the UK and its allies are serious about peace, the Montevideo Convention should not be treated as a gatekeeping checklist.

It should be treated as a roadmap.

Recognition of Palestinian statehood can — and arguably must — come before full compliance with every convention article.

It is only through recognition that Palestinians can begin to develop the institutional, legal, and diplomatic capacity to meet those very standards.

This is not, as some critics claim, “rewarding Hamas”. Quite the opposite.

UK officials have made clear that Hamas will play no part in any recognised Palestinian government — and must disarm, release hostages, and disavow terror if any future is to be possible.

Recognition is about the Palestinian people, not their oppressors or factional rulers.

It is about saying: we see your right to exist, to govern yourselves, to live in peace — and we will no longer let your enemies determine your status.

A crisis in international law — or an opportunity to reaffirm it?

Lord Hermer, the government’s Attorney General, has said that the UK must not take a “pick and mix” approach to international law.

But there’s another danger: allowing law to become so rigid that it can no longer respond to reality.

International law was not designed to be static.

It was created to prevent injustice and foster peace.

If denying Palestinian statehood helps prolong the violence in Gaza, the illegal annexation of the West Bank, and the erosion of the two-state solution, then the UK is not upholding international law. It is complicit in its collapse.

By recognising Palestine now — even conditionally — the UK would be asserting that the law should serve people, not power; that it should protect the stateless, not punish them; and that a two-state solution is not a distant dream, but a diplomatic imperative.

The hypocrisy of legal purity

It is not Palestine that fails the Montevideo test — it is the international community that keeps moving the goalposts.

If the law only applies to those strong enough to meet its standards, then it is not justice.

It is survival of the fittest – Darwinism dressed in legal robes.

The choice facing the UK in the run-up to the UN summit in September is not about legal consistency.

It is about moral courage, and whether we will continue to allow a people to be denied their rights on the technicalities of a treaty they were never allowed to fulfil — or finally act in the spirit, not just the letter, of international law.

*Albeit a problematic shift – for reasons described here and here.

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