Trump administration blocks Palestinian leaders from attending U.N. meeting in New York

Members of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian government will be unable to travel to the United Nations General Assembly next month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their visas.

The ban comes as several U.S. allies have declared they would recognize a Palestinian state at the gathering of world leaders at the U.N. headquarters in New York in response to Israel’s escalating assault in northern Gaza, which intensified Friday after the country announced it had begun the “initial stages” of its operation in the famine-gripped area.

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 Hamas attack and called on hostages taken by the militant group to be released.

In a statement Friday, the State Department said the Trump administration was reaffirming its “Commitment to Not Reward Terrorism,” and Rubio was revoking visas from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Before they can be considered “partners for peace,” the statement said that they “must consistently repudiate terrorism,” including the Hamas-led terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which saw 1,200 people killed and around 250 people taken hostage, and “end incitement to terrorism in education.”

It added that the PA must end its efforts “to secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state.”

“Both steps materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks,” the statement read, adding that the PA’s permanent U.N. mission in New York would not be affected by the restrictions.

Under a 1947 U.N. “headquarters agreement,” the U.S. is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the U.N. in New York. 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.

Washington has said it can deny visas for security, extremism and foreign policy reasons. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar 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, Denmark 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 which has seen more than 63,000 people killed, according to health officials in the enclave.

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.”