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Rabat – The United States has announced that it will deny and revoke visas for members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) ahead of next month’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
The US State Department said on Friday that the move was meant to hold the Palestinian leadership “accountable” for what it called a failure to meet commitments and for “undermining the prospects of peace.”
The statement accused the PA of supporting terrorism, referring to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and attempting to bypass negotiations by taking cases of Israeli abuses to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The announcement comes as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to attend the UNGA in September, where a special session on Palestinian rights is scheduled for September 22. It is not yet clear if the visa restrictions will affect his visit.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said the delegation was still studying the decision. “We will see exactly what it means and how it applies to any of our delegation, and we will respond accordingly,” he told reporters.
Under agreements made when the UN was set up in New York in 1947, the US is supposed to allow entry for officials traveling on UN business. However, Washington has denied visas in the past, including to former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat in 1988 and to Sudan’s then-president Omar al-Bashir in 2013, who was wanted by the ICC.
Both the PLO and PA represent the Palestinian people internationally and seek recognition of a Palestinian state. The Trump administration has previously imposed sanctions on Palestinian officials, accusing them of “glorifying violence” and blocking peace efforts.
This development comes as Israel continues its genocide on Palestinians in Gaza, where civilians face daily bombings, blocked humanitarian aid, and widespread starvation.
The situation has grown more dire in Gaza City, which Israel recently said it plans to fully occupy.
Critics say it is hypocritical for the United States to punish Palestinian officials for seeking justice in international courts while continuing to blindly support Israel as it commits massacres in Gaza.
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