US Denies Mahmoud Abbas a Visa to Address the UN, Second Year in a Row

The State Department confirmed Wednesday it will deny visas to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and members of his delegation, barring them from attending the UN General Assembly in New York next week. It's the second consecutive year Washington has taken this step.

Abbas was scheduled to address the assembly in person on September 24. Instead, he'll likely do what he did last year: speak by video, if UN member states approve it.

Why the State Department says it's doing this

The department said the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority "once again" failed to meet commitments required under two U.S. laws, the PLO Commitments Compliance Act of 1989 and the Middle East Peace Commitments Act of 2002.

"As a consequence of their failure to reform, contrary to their commitments to the United States, and their ongoing activities that undermine the prospects for peace, the United States will extend sanctions that deny visas to PLO members and PA officials," the department said in its statement, cited by Al Jazeera, CBC, and Arab News among others.

Specifically, the department pointed to Palestinian legal action against Israel at the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, efforts to secure unilateral recognition of statehood instead of negotiating directly with Israel, continued payments to families of people convicted of attacks on Israelis, and what it called glorification of terrorism in public statements and school textbooks.

State Department Deputy Spokeswoman Paloma Chacón told the Anadolu news agency, as reported by the Saudi Gazette, that "every visa decision is a national security decision," and that delegations had received guidance ahead of the Assembly on what could trigger a denial.

The PA Mission to the UN keeps a waiver under the UN Headquarters Agreement, meaning its regular staff can keep working in New York even though individual officials, including Abbas, are barred.

The Palestinian response

The Palestinian Authority condemned the decision as an "unjustified measure," according to Arab News, which cited a source familiar with the matter confirming Abbas was covered by the denial.

Abbas tried to work around it. According to Israel National News, he asked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Ankara last month to raise the issue with President Trump. Erdogan reportedly did call Trump, but the visa restrictions stayed in place, meaning the outreach didn't change the outcome.

Palestinian officials argue, as CBC reported, that decades of U.S.-mediated negotiations have failed to end Israeli occupation or produce an independent Palestinian state. They've turned instead to international courts and unilateral recognition campaigns rather than waiting on a peace process that hasn't delivered. If bilateral talks aren't working, they contend, international forums are the remaining tool available to them.

The U.S. position is that those same moves, the ICC and ICJ cases and the statehood push, violate specific commitments the PLO and PA made in writing decades ago, and that continued payments to the families of people convicted of attacks on Israelis cross a legal line under U.S. law that triggers mandatory sanctions.

The asymmetry critics point to

Al Jazeera noted that no Israeli officials face equivalent U.S. travel restrictions, despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza. The U.S. is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction over the case, which is the position it has taken publicly, though none of the sources here quote a State Department comment addressing the Abbas-Netanyahu comparison directly.

The backdrop for all of this is a wave of Western recognitions of Palestinian statehood over the past year. Arab News reported that 142 UN member states have now endorsed a Palestinian state, following a France-Saudi-co-chaired conference, and Al Jazeera noted the UK, France, and Canada added their recognitions this month. Washington and Israel remain opposed.

What happens next

Last year's identical standoff ended with the General Assembly voting 145-5-6 to let Abbas submit a prerecorded address, with the U.S. and Israel among the five no votes, according to the Jerusalem Post. The UN is expected to consider a similar remote-participation measure this year, and the Jerusalem Post reported the procedure under discussion could extend to other senior Palestinian officials barred from entering the U.S. for additional high-level UN events this session.

Whether Washington will actively contest that vote or simply oppose it again, as it did last year, hasn't been announced. Neither has any Palestinian plan beyond the standard diplomatic protest lodged Wednesday.