The State Department on Thursday announced it is imposing sanctions that deny visas to the two interrelated Palestinian entities that have historically governed Gaza and other disputed territories in the region.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s move to block visas from being granted to members of the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization appears to mark a rebuke to two key allies of the United States, France and Great Britain, which, in recent days, rolled out plans to recognize a Palestinian state that would likely hand the PA and PLO greater control over the region. 

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The State Department justified the sanctions by arguing that the PA and PLO, both controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, violated two U.S. laws seeking to hold the organizations accountable for commitments to renounce terrorism. The PA and PLO violated the commitments by taking actions to internationalize their conflict with Israel, such as through the International Criminal Court, supporting terrorists through the “incitement and glorification of violence” in textbooks, and providing payments and benefits in support of terrorism to Palestinian terrorists and their families, the State Department said. 

One of the laws, the Middle East Peace Commitments Act of 2002, allows the government to impose visa bans on PLO and PA officials for violations of those commitments to renounce terrorism. 

The State Department’s move to sanction the PA and PLO comes just two days after U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced tentative plans to recognize a Palestinian state in September at the U.N. General Assembly. It comes exactly one week after French President Emmanuel Macron made a strong commitment to do the same.

While the two countries have expressed different degrees of confidence in Abbas’s commitment to renouncing terrorism, moves by either of them to recognize a Palestinian state are viewed as the avenue to placing the PLO and PA leader in a greater position of power in Gaza, even though neither Macron nor Starmer directly names him as head of the state. 

“It’s important to say the British government doesn’t recognise governments, it recognises states,” Sir Vincent Fean, a former British consul general to Jerusalem, told the Independent. “So it isn’t actually recognising President [Mahmoud] Abbas as head of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] and head of the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas is chairman of the PLO and president of the PA. The PLO has played a broader role in the international representation of Palestinians. The PA has more directly governed disputed areas such as the West Bank and Gaza for years until Hamas took control. The PLO and PA have traditionally been viewed as the lesser of two evils when compared to Hamas, committing to renouncing terrorism and providing a measure of stability in the region. Still, it has historically drawn intense criticism, particularly from the U.S., for committing and condoning terrorist acts against Israel, despite pledges to avoid violence. 

However, amid the turmoil in Gaza, now controlled by Hamas, U.S. allies have increasingly moved to break with the Trump administration’s unwillingness to cede control to an Abbas-aligned government. While neither France nor the U.K.’s plans to recognize a Palestinian state directly hand the reins to the PLO and PA, Abbas is viewed as the de facto leader of any alternative government to Hamas. And both Macron and Starmer have spoken with him as they prepare to declare formal support for a Palestinian state in September at the U.N. General Assembly.

When it announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state on July 24, France in particular expressed confidence in Abbas’s commitment to renounce violence. The country’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs lauded the “courageous commitments taken by the Palestinian Authority, which has come out strongly in favor of the two-State solution and peace” as France pledged to choose “the Palestinian actors who have chosen dialogue and peace over those such as Hamas.”

“In light of the commitments that the President of the Palestinian Authority made to me, I therefore wrote to him expressing my determination to move forward,” Macron wrote in a post to X that earned him praise from PA Vice President Hussein Al Sheikh, who thanked the French president for his letter to Abbas informing him of the statehood decision. 

Starmer spoke directly with Abbas before going public with his tentative decision to back a Palestinian state this fall, according to the Wafa news agency, which reported Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa also discussed the move with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The British prime minister’s formal announcement on Tuesday announcing the decision provoked praise from the PA, which called Starmer’s statement “a corrective to over a century of dispossession, during which the Palestinian people have been deprived of our land, liberty and lives.”

While Rubio’s State Department has signaled strong displeasure with Starmer and Macron for their stance on a Palestinian state, particularly through its latest action against the PLO and PA’s visas on Thursday, Trump has appeared to take a more laissez-faire approach to the matter. Although he condemned attempts to put pressure on Israel as “rewarding Hamas” during an appearance in Scotland this week alongside Starmer, Trump said, “I don’t mind him taking a position” when asked what he thought about Starmer recognizing a Palestinian state. 

“That’s [Macron’s] opinion. He can have an opinion,” Trump later said. “I guess Starmer is doing the same thing as Macron, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I have to agree.”

Some analysts have warned that should the UN approve a Palestinian state as a full member, the move “would immediately trigger U.S. funding cuts to the international organization” due to its “inexorable links” to the PLO and PA. 

“The Foreign Relations Authorization Act FY 1990 and 1991 section 414 created a prohibition on U.S. funding to the United Nations in the event the PLO is recognized as a member state party. The PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA) remain inexorably linked, and so a declaration of statehood and member status would force a U.S. funding halt,” Tyler Stapleton, the director of government relations for Foundation of Defense for Democracies, a Washington, D.C., based right-leaning think tank, said. 

Unlike Starmer and Macron’s approach to ending the crisis in Gaza by proposing a Palestinian state, Trump has suggested the conflict could be resolved if Hamas releases the remaining hostages it abducted during the terrorist organization’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. 

Amid the divergence of views with allies, Starmer has appeared to go to greater lengths than Macron to keep the relationship between his country and the U.S. strong. 

While Macron unequivocally promised to recognize a Palestinian state in the coming months, Starmer held out hope for a ceasefire before September and said that the PA and PLO must commit to “much needed reform” before his final decision, which would assess in September “how far the parties have met these steps.”

“Starmer has been careful to maintain a cordial relationship with Trump, which he sees as something that benefits the U.K., Europe, and the precarious alliance of democracies worldwide,” University of Glasgow politics lecturer Michael Frazer, previously told the Washington Examiner. “The U.S.-U.K. trade deal and continued support for Ukraine seem to suggest that this friendly approach is paying off, as unpopular as it may be in the U.K. generally and in Scotland in particular.”

MACRON ANNOUNCES FRANCE WILL RECOGNIZE PALESTINIAN STATE AT UN

Given the circumstances, careful rhetoric from Starmer is unlikely to rectify the increasingly uncertain situation the U.S. faces as it chooses whether to join a growing number of key allies in backing Palestinian statehood or stay in Israel’s corner as it vows to stand against Hamas. 

“Establishing a Palestinian state today is establishing a Hamas state, a jihadist state,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar declared Monday. “It ain’t gonna happen,” he added.