WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is barring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from attending the meeting of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month, where several countries including France, Canada and the U.K. are expected to formally recognize a Palestinian state.
Abbas, along with approximately 80 other officials from his Palestinian Authority (PA), had their U.S. visas revoked or denied ahead of the meeting, according to a State Department official who accused them of undermining the prospects for peace in Gaza, where Israel escalated its assault on Friday.
Both the PA and and the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) “must repudiate terrorism” before “they can be taken seriously as partners for peace,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Saturday, adding that they should abandon “the pursuit of unilateral recognition of statehood.” The Trump administration “does not reward terrorism,” he said.
As the host country for the United Nations, the U.S. is required under a 1947 “headquarters agreement,” to grant foreign diplomats access to the U.N., but exceptions have been made by past administrations for both security and policy reasons.
After the U.S. refused to issue a visa to PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1988, the U.N. General Assembly held a meeting that year in Geneva instead of New York so he could address it.
Headed by Abbas, who has not faced an election in almost two decades, the Palestinian Authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has not governed in Gaza since 2007, when the Palestinian president’s security forces were driven out by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
In June, Abbas wrote a letter to France’s president in which he condemned the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and called on hostages taken by the militant group to be released.
Pigott’s comments echoed a statement from the State Department on Friday that said the PA and the PLO “must consistently repudiate terrorism,” including the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attacks, which saw 1,200 people killed and around 250 people taken hostage.
It also accused the PA and the PLO of contributing to “Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks.”
Washington has said it can deny visas for security, extremism and foreign policy reasons. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar welcomed the State Department’s decision.
But Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., told reporters Friday that as far as he knew, “the head of our delegation is President Mahmoud Abbas, and he is coming to represent the state of Palestine and the Palestinian people in that conference.”
On the visa revocations, he added, “We will see exactly what it means and how it applies to any of our delegation, and we will respond accordingly.”
Several European foreign ministers criticized the decision ahead of a meeting in Copenhagen on Saturday. A U.N. General Assembly “cannot be subject to any restrictions on access,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters.
France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are each expected to formally recognize a Palestinian state at the assembly, a move the Trump administration has opposed. The state of Palestine is currently recognized by 147 of the U.N.’s 193 member states.
The visa revocations came amid mounting global anger over starvation in Gaza after more than 22 months of war that has killed more than 63,000 people in the enclave, according to local health officials.
After launching a fresh assault on the north of the enclave earlier this week, Israel said Friday that Gaza City had become a dangerous combat zone.
The operation around the strip’s largest city is expected to displace thousands, and after Israel carried out heavy strikes in the area on Friday, residents, many of whom have been displaced several times during the war, started to flee. As tanks advanced in several areas, by afternoon Gaza City’s streets were crowded with newly displaced families.
Um Warda said she could not sleep as shelling shook the ground beneath her, forcing her to flee “with no food, no water.”
“We don’t even know if we are alive or dead,” she said. “I have no idea where we will go or what will happen to us.”
Nearby, Ammar Ahmad Abu Warda, 21 and newly married, carried what belongings he could on his shoulders, but he said he had lost track of his wife and children.
“My whole life is gone,” he said. “This is my land, my house — both are gone, but I will stay.”
Abigail Williams reported from Washington and Freddie Clayton from London.
