Why is…the Recognition of Palestinian Statehood Causing Debate?

Show notes

In this special Voices episode, we unpack the recent recognition of Palestinian statehood by several Western governments, including the UK, France, Portugal, Canada, and Australia. The move came shortly after a UN Special Committee report finding Israel’s actions in Gaza consistent with genocide. This historic decision has sparked intense debate about the timing, motivations, and consequences of recognising Palestine as a state. Emile Badarin (University of Oxford) and Victor Kattan (University of Nottingham) join host Polly Pallister-Wilkins to discuss these developments and examine the broader politics and legal aspects of recognition within the long struggle for Palestinian statehood. Emile Badarin is a researcher based in Oxford and the author of Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States: Normalizing Dispossession and Elimination in Palestine (Bloomsbury 2025) and Palestinian Political Discourse: Between Exile and Occupation (Routledge 2016). His work explores coloniality, settler colonialism, and the international politics surrounding Palestinian recognition. Victor Kattan is Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham and has written extensively on the legal and historical dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including From Coexistence to Conquest (Pluto Press 2009) and The Palestine Question in International Law (BIICL 2008). He has also served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department and advised the Palestinian leadership on international treaty accession and multilateral engagement.

Emile Badarin

Victor Kattan

Badarin, E. (2024). Foreign Policy and the Performance of Collective State Recognition Amidst Genocide. Middle East Critique, 33(4), 635–654. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2024.2408983

Badarin, E. (2021). Politics of Recognition, Elimination and Settler-Colonialism. Critical Sociology, 49(2), 233-252. https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205211058452 (Original work published 2023)

Emile Badarin, States Recognition in Foreign Policy: The Case of Sweden's Recognition of Palestine, Foreign Policy Analysis, Volume 16, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 78–97, https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/ory019

Kattan, V. (2025, July 31). Recognition of a Palestinian state is long overdue — now the West is understanding the urgency. ABC Religion.

Kattan, V. (2019). From Coexistence to Conquest. International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949. Pluto Press.

Kattan, V. (2008). The Palestine Question in International Law. British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

Kattan, V. and Ranjan, A. (2025). The breakup of India and Palestine. The causes and legacies of partition Manchester University Press.

Cuddy, B. and Kattan, V. (2023). Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law. University of Michigan Press.

Mapping Israeli settlement expansion the West Bank since 1967

West Bank Access Restrictions Map 2025 (including checkpoints, barriers, settlements, and Areas A, B and C)