I think you have look at different between nations and non-nations.
Some on left view nations as a bad idea, which is comparable to coming down from the trees as a bad idea.
It's quite easy to see that Nations are a good idea- a human development which allows more advanced civilization.

Without something which can be described as a nation, humans organize based on family- tribal. Tribal human organization will have association with related or separate tribal groups- this loose "network" of connection was basically global thousands of thousands ago, with some regions such as Austrailia and New World spending somewhat long durations of time being mostly disconnected from global network e.g. Austrailia 75,000 years, and New World around 10,000 years. And of course various pockets human populations can be more isolated or more connected than others- for example the Middle East would been area where there was more connections and say Ireland being less connected.

Tribal groups can become more organized by ideas which can be associated with certain people. Example: people who hunt leopards, people who wear shoes, people that have a bone in their nose, etc. Similar to this you have groups which align to lengendary figures which form framework stories- basically you have people who organize like people currently do as sport fans. This organization which aligned to ideas not biological connection, but to ideas one might "agree" is the beginning of nation state.

Artifacts of a nation are things like currency, roads, common language, units of measure, how and who owns land, laws, religion, schools, etc.
Artifacts of a non-nation is public works in disrepair, lack of a currency, no land ownership, no sense of belonging to common identity and sole identification with family.

America as nation can fail simply by half nation "going one way" and other half "the other way"; one half might retain the name of America, but it doesn't really mean much- of course the US is in a sense always been divided into 50 states, hence United States.

If Federal govt cease to exist one would have 50 States, if then all or one of states fail then you down counties and "city states". If you living in California, and federal govt ceases to function, you could still call yourself American and old maps might inform you are an American, but you really aren't. And if the California govt fails, you could still call yourself an American and/or a Californian, but you really are neither. Now your land deed which is tied to the State of California, might have some value if some later point some other nation is formed and that nation recognizes that deed, or recognizes that since you living on a chunk of land you own that land [and if you also have an old deed, that further helps your claim].

Now, of course the bureaucrats or the elected government is not the nation- these can all wiped out by nuke and you could still have nation- what's important is the people in area holding an unified view- bureaucrats can be re-trained and officals re-elected. The people would not need to riot and burn down everything- though without police on the street people sometimes have the tendency to act like savages.

In short, Palestine didn't exist, but we have reached an international agreement that it should allowed to form a nation [The international stuff may be helpful, but people in the region need to form a nation or the international stuff is pretty irrevent- so far, it doesn't look good].