


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.”