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The US is barring veteran Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from attending next month’s UN General Assembly in New York where the UK, France and others plan to recognise Palestinian statehood.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Friday that the US would not give visas to members of the Palestinian Authority — the internationally accepted leadership who administer parts of the occupied West Bank — and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas also leads, ahead of the historic meeting.
The decision reflects President Donald Trump’s continued support for Israel in the face of international anger at its 22-month war in Gaza, which local health officials say has killed more than 63,000 people.
Britain, France, Canada and Australia recently announced they would recognise Palestinian statehood in a bid to protect plans for a two-state solution that has also long been the goal of US peace negotiations. The Trump administration has moved away from that ambition.
Rubio said the department would allow exemptions for the Palestinian delegation to the UNGA, as required by the UN headquarters agreements of 1947. But a department spokesperson said this would not apply to Abbas, who as president of the Palestinian Authority typically attends the annual meeting.
The Trump administration has opposed the plan to recognise Palestinian statehood and the bar on Abbas’s visa represents a symbolic rebuttal by Washington.
It is also a reprimand to Palestinians and Europeans who have sought accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza through international courts.
In a statement that echoed Israeli government rhetoric, Rubio accused the PLO and the Palestinian Authority — long the west’s preferred partner in negotiations about a two-state solution — of not doing enough to renounce terrorism.
“Before the PLO and PA can be considered partners for peace, they must consistently repudiate terrorism — including the October 7 massacre — and end incitement to terrorism in education,” Rubio said in a statement.
Abbas earlier this year condemned the October 7 2023 attacks and demanded that Hamas release the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The US’s top diplomat also blamed the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza on Palestinian appeals to the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice.
“The PA must also end its attempts to bypass negotiations through international lawfare campaigns, including appeals to the ICC and ICJ and efforts to secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state,” Rubio said.
Hamas, the Islamist group, wrested control of Gaza from Abbas’s comparatively secular government in a 2007 power struggle that followed Hamas’s victory in legislative elections.
It has ruled the enclave since then under an Israeli blockade, fighting several wars with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority has continued to pay salaries for civil servants and run some services in Gaza, such as hospitals and schools, but Israel has not presented evidence that it played a role in Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
The US in 1988 denied the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat a visa to the UNGA after he made a first formal claim to statehood. Washington also then cited terrorism as part of its justification. The UN Security Council held a special meeting in Geneva as a result.
