Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Friday that he would not issue visas to Palestinian officials to prevent them from attending the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York next month.
The visa ban applies to officials from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization who are not based in the Palestinian mission at the U.N., the announcement said.
The State Department said Mr. Rubio was making the move to hold the two bodies “accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace.” The agency is demanding that they both “consistently repudiate terrorism,” including the Hamas-led attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and “end incitement to terrorism in education.”
The department also said the Palestinian Authority, which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, must end appeals to legal institutions, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and stop pushing countries to recognize a “conjectural Palestinian state.”
The action by Mr. Rubio raises doubts about whether Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority and the P.L.O., will be able to attend the General Assembly in September, an annual conclave where world leaders discuss the most pressing global issues, from wars to famines to environmental crises. Mr. Abbas has called for the establishment of a Palestinian state and denounced Israel’s decades-old military occupation in past speeches at the U.N.
He said last year that Israel was carrying out a “full-scale war of genocide” in Gaza. “Palestine will remain ours,” he told the leaders gathered at the U.N. “And if anyone were to leave, it will be the occupying usurpers.”
Mr. Abbas has consistently affirmed support for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and in the 1990s the P.L.O. officially recognized Israel’s right “to exist in peace and security.”
The move by Mr. Rubio could be aimed at weakening discussion of Palestinian statehood at the U.N. meeting. France and Canada recently announced that they planned to recognize a Palestinian state at the meeting next month, and Britain said it would, too, if certain conditions were met. Those would be the first countries from the Group of 7 allied nations to do so; 147 nations already recognize such a state.
Britain said it would reconsider doing so if Israel demonstrated “sufficient progress” toward addressing the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and toward reaching a hostage and cease-fire deal with Hamas. Britain has also said Israel must commit to “a long-term sustainable peace,” reviving the prospect of and a two-state solution for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Britain has said Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group, should release all the remaining hostages and give up governing Gaza.
The United States generally issues visas to allow foreign leaders to come to U.N. headquarters. For officials from countries under severe U.S. government sanctions, American officials restrict their movements in New York.
In 2019, as the first Trump administration was carrying out an economic pressure campaign against Iran, U.S. officials announced they were barring senior Iranian officials and their family members from entering the United States. The State Department made the announcement while President Hassan Rouhani of Iran and more than 80 of his top diplomats and aides were in New York to attend the General Assembly. Mr. Rouhani and the other Iranian officials were allowed to remain in the country for the meeting.
The United Nations has said the United States has no right to prevent foreign officials from visiting U.N. headquarters.
Mr. Abbas’s office expressed “deep regret and astonishment” at Mr. Rubio’s decision and called on the Trump administration to “reconsider and reverse” the move, according to Wafa, the government-run news agency based in the West Bank.
One Palestinian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the U.S. government had been taking a long time to issue visas for officials planning to travel to New York for the meeting this year.
At the end of July, Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa of the Palestinian Authority traveled to U.N. headquarters, where he attended a conference in support of the two-state solution.
Mr. Abbas, 89, has long expressed opposition to violence against Israelis and ordered the Palestinian Authority’s security forces to cooperate with the Israeli military and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency — a policy that has garnered praise from Israeli officials.
In a letter to President Emmanuel Macron of France in June, Mr. Abbas said that the 2023 attack in Israel was “unacceptable and condemnable” and that Hamas should immediately release all hostages.
The Biden administration had said Israel must ultimately allow the Palestinian Authority to govern the West Bank and Gaza even as U.S. officials pushed for more transparency and less corruption in the authority. But the Trump administration has taken a much more hostile stance.
Mr. Rubio and Steve Witkoff, the special envoy for peace missions, did not visit Palestinian officials in Ramallah on recent trips to the Middle East, in which they met Israeli officials a short car ride away.
Mr. Abbas repeatedly clashed with the first Trump administration, ultimately barring senior Palestinian officials from having contact with people in that administration. During Mr. Trump’s second term, however, he has tried to rehabilitate his relationship with his American counterpart.
Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, thanked Mr. Rubio on social media for “this bold step and for standing by Israel once again.”
Mr. Rubio has been an outspoken critic of supporters of Palestinian rights and has vocally defended Israel’s military actions, which have come under widespread condemnation around the world. He has moved to revoke the permanent residency status and visas of foreign citizens legally in the United States who have publicly supported Palestinian rights.
Federal judges have rebuked Mr. Rubio for the actions, saying they most likely violate First Amendment protections. They have ordered the U.S. government to release people detained for deportation as a result of Mr. Rubio’s moves.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
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