> Palestine is currently not meeting the Montevideo criteria Yes, not that it necessarily matters (for reasons I’ll get to later), it does, and while you don't

> Palestine is currently not meeting the Montevideo criteria Yes, not that it necessarily matters (for reasons I’ll get to later), it does, and while you don't present any argument for your claim that it does not, I suspect that rests on inverting the Montevideo conventions explicit statement on territory acquired by force. > Of course you can say "to hell with the Montevideo criteria, it's just a convention" More to the point, it is a convention binding some countries (of which Belgium is not one) to one extreme pole on the question theory of statehood, and it should not be surprising that other nations have views ranging from the opposing pole through a range of positions which balance the considerations of the two poles, informed by various pragmatic and legal factors, including some which were not not norms of international law at the time of the Convention, like the right of self-determination under the UN Charter.