The U.S. maintains that such an elevation of Palestinian status has to come as part of a treaty with Israel that enshrines the two-state solution: establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, complete with a raft of complicated security and territorial agreements.

The reality on the ground is nowhere near that.

Even before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, the right-wing government of Israel was expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank on land that Palestinians claim as theirs. Continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the scores of heavily guarded settlements, considered illegal under international law, have rendered a contiguous Palestinian state in the region impossible, critics say.

The war in the Gaza Strip has further complicated the equation because of the vast devastation of the coastal enclave — nearly 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to Gaza health officials — and the reluctance many in the international community would have to seeing Hamas members in a Palestinian national government.

What do the Palestinians say?

For Palestinians, full U.N. membership is one more step in recognition of their long-standing vision of statehood, an ever-more-elusive goal since the 1948 establishment of Israel that led to the displacement of millions of Palestinians.

But the current nature of Palestinian leadership also leaves many questions unanswered. The West Bank, governed by the internationally recognized secular Palestinian Authority, is divided from the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas, an Islamic militancy considered by the U.S. and some European countries to be a terrorist organization.

President Joe Biden and others have urged major reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which is itself deeply unpopular among Palestinians, who see it as corrupt and ineffective.

Palestinians do not have “a credible leadership … capable of leading it out of its current existential crisis,” Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center in Washington, said in a panel discussion Thursday.

Even if formation of a Palestinian state is practically impossible right now, granting U.N. membership would be a useful re-upping of the issue, said Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian politician and activist.

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