This week Yoav's blog will present articles regarding the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by Latin American countries. Last week Argentina joined Brazil and Uruguay who were the first countries to declare their recognition of a Palestinian state after the visit of Palestinian authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas last month.

The issue of unilateral declaration began in 2009, when Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, set a goal for a Palestinian state to be established by August 2011 whether through an agreement with Israel or without one. Fayyad's mission is to reconstruct Palestinian infrastructure, security forces, economy and cultural life, thereby peparing the Palestinians for independence.

Thus far the reconstruction is progressing as expected by Fayyad. The Palestinian authority's economy is on the rise, corruption in governmental institutions is decreasing, the American trained security forces are efficient fighting against Hamas and the large cities in the West Bank are becoming important Arab cultural centres.

On the other hand, the peace process is stuck once again and Palestinian negotiators have refused to come back to the table for talks unless Israel announces a total block on settlement building.

Palestinian sovereignty is a big challenged for Israel because the question Israelis are asking is how other countries will react towards a unilateral declaration by the Palestinians.

In the follow articles from YNET you can read about the Latin American countries’ recognition and Israel and USA's reactions.