US revokes visas of PA, PLO officials ahead of UN General Assembly
The Trump administration has revoked visas for Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization officials ahead of the high-level meetings at UN headquarters in New York next month.
The State Department criticised the PA for carrying out what it dubbed “lawfare campaigns”, including appeals to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and calls for countries to recognise a Palestinian state.
Those steps “materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks”, the department said in a statement, which did not specify which officials had their visas revoked.
Washington has repeatedly hit out at the ICJ and ICC for the courts’ recent decisions related to Israel, with the Trump administration levying a series of sanctions against ICC judges and prosecutors in recent months.
The ICJ ruled last year that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful and should come to an end as soon as possible.
The ICC also issued arrest warrants in November last year for Israeli PM Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.
More lies and complicity. The breakdown of Gaza ceasefire talks are all because of Trump, Witkoff and Netanyahu adding more impossible demands. They're not negotiations.
USA needs to be sanctioned. (Although Trump is already doing a good job sanctioning the US with tarifs...)
It is rare for the US to cancel visas of officials before a UN General Assembly meeting
It is rare for the US to cancel the visas of officials attending official events, such as the UN General Assembly, which takes place late in September every year in New York.
There have been instances where Iranian officials have not been able to go, but there have not been any efforts to target the top leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
In this case, the US says that because of the PA’s and PLO’s ongoing efforts to try to bring about the recognition of a Palestinian state through organisations such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Courts of Justice (ICJ), the US objects to these efforts to bring about a final round of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for a two-state solution.
And they also say that the reason for the cancellation of these visas is that the PA and PLO have not condemned Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks.
PA urges Trump admin to reconsider visa revocations
The Palestinian Authority presidency has expressed “deep regret and astonishment” at Washington’s decision to revoke visas for Palestinian officials set to take part in high-level UN General Assembly meetings next month.
“The Presidency stressed that this decision stands in clear contradiction to international law and the UN Headquarters Agreement, particularly since the State of Palestine is an observer member of the United Nations,” it said in a statement carried by the Wafa news agency
“It called on the US administration to reconsider and reverse its decision, reaffirming Palestine’s full commitment to international law, UN resolutions, and obligations toward peace.”
US justification for visa revocations ‘obviously absurd’
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, says the Trump administration is “clearly violating diplomatic protocol” in its decision to revoke visas for PA and PLO officials.
Washington justified its move by accusing the Palestinian bodies of failing to “repudiate terrorism”, among other reasons.
But Duss told Al Jazeera that the US government is “simply being dishonest”, noting that PA President Abbas has condemned “terrorism” for many years. “Israeli officials themselves repeatedly affirm that the Palestinian Authority works with them to oppose ‘terrorism’ in the West Bank,” he explained.
“What’s going on here is clearly ideologically driven: There are people inside the Trump administration who are working closely with the right-wing Israeli government and their goal is to simply remove the Palestinian liberation movement from the international agenda,” Duss said.
“They do not recognise the Palestinian peoples’ right to state, and they’re both trying to prevent that on the ground in Palestine and now they’re trying to remove them from the international agenda in New York.”
What does UN headquarters agreement stipulate?
Article 11 states that the “federal, state or local authorities of the United States shall not impose any impediments to transit to or from the headquarters” for representatives of UN members or officials.
“Other persons invited to the headquarters district by the United Nations or by such specialized agency on official business” also shall not be impeded from accessing the UN headquarters district, it says.
Article 12 also stipulates that “the provisions of Section 11 shall be applicable irrespective of the relations existing between the Governments of the persons referred to in that section and the Government of the United States”.
