Israel

1967 lines (actually, just the Green Line marking the 1949 cease-fire positions).

Neither the Security Council nor the General Assembly has the legal authority to declare statehood. The U.N.'s website says candidly that the world body "does not possess any authority to recognize either a state or a government."

Some, however, argue that there is precedent, citing General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947, which endorsed a plan to partition the former British League of Nations mandate into Jewish and Arab states, and a "special international regime" for Jerusalem. They should read what the resolution actually says. Like all assembly resolutions, it is not legally binding. It simply "recommends" the partition plan in question, and "requests that the Security Council take the necessary measures" to implement it. The council never adopted the plan. Although the Jewish leadership accepted it, the Arabs did not, and a multi-front Arab assault followed. End of precedent.

While the foregoing international law arguments are complex and probably have eternal life, they will settle nothing today.

The council and the assembly jointly decide on the admission of new members to the U.N. Because the U.N. Charter provides that only "states" can be members, a decision to admit "Palestine" would obviously mean that those supporting membership considered "Palestine" to meet the charter's statehood requirement.

 When the General Assembly adopted the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution in 1975, Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan responded: "The United States rises to declare … that it does not acknowledge, that it will not abide by and that it will never acquiesce in this infamous act." That's a good place to start here as well. We should simply disregard the outcome, and tell the world so at every opportunity. Israel and whoever else stands tall and votes against the resolution in that very lonely General Assembly room should do the same.

The reality is that the controlling U.N. approach to this dispute is grounded in the decisions made after the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, namely Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. These "land for peace" resolutions make no mention of "the 1967 borders" or any other specific line, and for very compelling reasons. Those who drafted these texts understood full well that the 1967 lines could never meet Israel's legitimate quest, in 242's words, "to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." It has been America's consistent policy to support those Israeli aspirations, and should remain so today.

True, a massive majority supporting Palestinian statehood will constitute yet another assault on Israel's legitimacy and its security needs. And while that vote is likely to be frustrating and bitter, it is best to treat it like the grass we tread beneath our feet.

In fact, a Palestinian statehood resolution will almost certainly wound the United Nations, perhaps gravely, just as for many Americans "Zionism is racism" delegitimized not Israel but the U.N. itself.