ABSTRACT
I INTRODUCTION The proclamation in 1988 of the independent state of Palestine has underlined once again a major function which the United Nations has assumed by default, namely that of collective legitimisation, and its corollary, collective illegitimisation. A comparison with the attempted creation of another controversial state this century – that of Rhodesia – sheds light on this significant development of the United Nations. It will be recalled that on 11 November 1965 a European minority under the leadership of Ian Smith unilaterally declared the independence of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. The purported new state of Rhodesia had serious claims to fulfil the traditional criteria of statehood. If possessed a defined territory, permanent population and a government clearly manifesting its effectiveness both in terms of authority over the population, and in terms of independence from external control. Twenty-three years later, on 15 November 1988, the Palestine National Council, at its 19th Extraordinary Session in Algiers, adopted the decision to declare ‘in the name of God and on behalf of the Palestinian Arab people, the establishment of the state of Palestine in the land of Palestine with its capital at Jerusalem’. Whilst there clearly was an identifiable population, there was no elected government, and an apparent lack of effective control over defined territory. In terms therefore of the traditional criteria for recognition of statehood, the contrasts between the two cases may seem to be evident. Yet in the former, the ‘State of Rhodesia’ was effectively denied recognition and entry into the international community by the United Nations until its accession to independence in 1980 as the State of Zimbabwe on the basis of majority rule. In the latter case, the proclamation of an independent State of Palestine was officially acknowledged by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1988, and granted recognition by close to 100 states.5
