The legitimacy of the State of Israel has been questioned since before the state was formed.1 There has been opposition to Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, since its emergence in 19th-century Europe. Since the establishment of the State of Israel and the concurrent Nakba in 1948, a number of figures, organizations, and states have challenged Israel's political legitimacy and its occupation of territories belonging to Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Over the course of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and broader Arab–Israeli conflict, the country's authority has also been questioned on a number of fronts. Criticism of Israel may include opposition to the belief that the state has a right to exist or, since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, the established power structure within the Israeli-occupied territories. Israel has also been accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes—such as apartheid, starvation and genocide—including by scholars, legal experts, and human rights organizations. Israel regards such criticism as attempts to delegitimize it. According to Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Israel has maintained "the longest and one of the most deadly military occupations in the world". On 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted to the United Nations (UN) as a full member state. It also has bilateral ties with each of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. As of 2025, 29 of the 193 UN member states do not formally recognize Israeli sovereignty; 26 of the 29 non-recognizing countries are located within the Muslim world, with Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela representing the remainder. Most of the governments opposed to Israel have cited the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Israel's ongoing military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as the basis for their stance. In the early 1990s, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat exchanged the Letters of Mutual Recognition. Pursuant to this correspondence, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally recognized Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state while Israel formally recognized the PLO as a legitimate entity representing the Palestinians. This development aimed to set the stage for negotiations towards a two-state solution (i.e., Israel alongside the State of Palestine), through what would become known as the Oslo Accords, as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.