U.S. Bars Abbas From UN Again
The United States has refused Mahmoud Abbas an entry visa for the 81st General Assembly, keeping the Palestinian Authority president out of New York for a second year running and sending the Assembly toward a vote as early as Thursday on whether he may speak by recording or video link.
The State Department confirmed the decision on Wednesday as an extension of visa sanctions on Palestine Liberation Organization members and Palestinian Authority officials. Dozens of other PA officials who planned to travel with him were also refused. He is listed to speak on 24 September, the day Benjamin Netanyahu is expected in the hall. Last year, after the same ban, Abbas spoke from Ramallah on tape.
Washington did not name Abbas in its public text. It told Congress the PLO and PA had “once again” fallen short of the PLO Commitments Compliance Act of 1989 and the Middle East Peace Commitments Act of 2002. The department listed four complaints: cases at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice; a push for unilateral recognition of statehood instead of talks with Israel; stipends the United States calls payments to terrorists or their families; and official language and textbooks that, it said, glorify attacks. “As a consequence of their failure to reform,” the statement said, visas would stay shut.
One official who was refused shared the notice with The Times of Israel. It cited Immigration and Nationality Act section 212(a)(3)(B), a permanent bar for people the statute links to terrorist activity or a terrorist group. It was not clear whether Abbas’s own letter used that clause. The Trump administration applied the same policy before the 80th session in 2025 and called both decisions enforcement of statute, not a one-off slight.
Last September the Assembly voted 145-5–6 to let Abbas submit a recording for that session only and to allow limited remote work in other high-level meetings. Israel and the United States voted no, with the resolution stating it should not be a precedent.
The 1947 Headquarters Agreement tells the United States to ease transit to the UN district for people the Organization invites. Administrations of both parties have answered that security and visa law still bind them. That argument now returns every high-level week.
Recognition of a Palestinian state has widened at the United Nations. The United States still says statehood must come from talks with Israel, treats Hamas as a terrorist group and holds the Authority responsible for what it calls incitement and cash for attackers. Palestinian officials reject that reading of the prisoner payments and of the court cases, and they point to last year’s majority as proof that shutting a recognised leader out of the building sits badly with UN practice.
