The Palestinian Authority isn't a fully fledged member of the United Nations yet. The UN General Assembly voted to change just one word in its observer status: Palestine is now a non-member "state" rather than "entity." So what's the big deal? Gregg Carlstrom for Al Jazeera calls the vote a "high-profile diplomatic defeat" over Israel and the United States who opposed the move. Palestine can now take Israel, and other countries, to the International Criminal Court as well as join UN bodies. Whether it will want to do that, given promised retaliation from the US and Israel if it does, remains to be seen. The most intriguing result of the upgrade, Carlstrom writes, could be reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.