World waits to see how Israel reacts as France set to recognise Palestinian state
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
France is due to be the latest country to recognise the state of Palestine. But could it spark a backlash from Israel? Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said recognition gives "a huge reward to terrorism".
We hear from a member of France's national assembly, and from both Israelis and Palestinians. Also on the programme: the Egyptian president pardons the dual British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, after years in prison; and the literature professor who stumbled across lost stories from one of the most important writers of the twentieth century - Virginia Woolf.
(Photo:The Grabels mayor's house flies the Palestinian flag next to the French and European Union flags, in Grabels, Southern France on 22 September 2025. Credit: Photo by GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. |
| 0:15.2 | I'm Tim Fraggs. And we're beginning with the sound of lines being sharpened. |
| 0:23.7 | If that sounds a bit abstract, it's because it is. |
| 0:29.3 | While we're talking about one of the world's longest running and certainly currently bloodiest conflicts, |
| 0:33.8 | today is all about the politics and the language around that conflict. |
| 0:38.7 | And that's because later today we're expecting France to become the latest Western country formally to recognise the state of Palestine. Their move will follow Britain, Canada, |
| 0:45.2 | Australia and Portugal doing so yesterday. The first visible sign of the change was evident in |
| 0:50.8 | West London this morning at a flag-raising ceremony outside what will become |
| 0:55.0 | the Palestinian embassy. |
| 1:01.8 | But what do the ceremonials portend? Where might all this lead? It's our main story today. |
| 1:08.7 | And before we try to hear the arguments in favor and try to test |
| 1:12.0 | the case for them, let's hear the argument against recognition now, or indeed ever, of a Palestinian |
| 1:17.8 | state. The Israeli Prime Minister, bin Laden Netanyahu, has called it a reward for terror. |
| 1:22.9 | This is what his Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amachai Chikli, had to tell NewsAir yesterday. |
| 1:28.4 | What does it mean to take a microphone and declare an unexistent state with zero sovereign |
| 1:34.3 | capabilities that supports terror? It's ridiculous. I don't think that Kirstearner cares about |
| 1:40.5 | Israel or wants the best for Israel. He is serving Hamas propaganda, is harming our chances |
| 1:47.2 | to bring back the hostages. And the one message from Kiel Starmel, you go, you butcher innocent |
| 1:54.0 | people on Shabbat morning, in their beds, and then we will award you with a state. |
| 2:00.8 | Well, I mean, actually, that is not leadership. That is not leadership. That is a betrayal. |
| 2:05.8 | Amahai, Chikli, speaking to James Menendez. |
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