Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the visas of dozens of Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials ahead of the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York later this month.
In a statement shared on X, US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott announced the Trump administration’s decision, saying, “before we take them seriously as partners in peace, the PA and PLO must completely reject terrorism and stop counterproductively pursuing the unilateral recognition of a hypothetical state”.
The controversial, sweeping announcement has raised the stakes for Palestinian participation, signalling a harder-edged US posture.
The State Department, however, underscored that the PA’s UN mission remains covered by the UN Headquarters Agreement, meaning the office itself retains protections. Yet, officials acknowledged that the visa restrictions could still curtail PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s presence at this year’s global gathering.
With the Gaza genocide sharply escalating as Israel pushes ahead to conquer Gaza City and annex the West Bank, the already fraught logistics and politics of Palestinian representation at the UN are becoming even more complex.
Washington cast the move as part of efforts to penalise those implicated in international legal probes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel’s war on Gaza, saying they undermine negotiations.
But analysts say the message is unmistakable: legal pressure at The Hague will be met with diplomatic pressure in New York and Washington.
Many have also linked the US decision to confirmed plans by a growing number of countries, including the UK, Canada, France, and Belgium, to recognise Palestine as a state for the first time.
“The decision to revoke Palestinian officials’ visas aligns with American-Israeli policies aimed at undermining the Palestinian cause and erasing the Palestinian people’s political presence,” analyst Sari Orabi told The New Arab.
He said the move is in line with pro-Israel policies which began in the first Trump administration, starting with the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy there.
Soon after, the US recognised Israel’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank were not illegal.
“All this reveals the settlement-oriented direction adopted by the US,” said Orabi. Against this backdrop, he sees the visa cancellation as more than procedure.
“It seeks to eliminate a genuine political representative for the Palestinian people,” he argued, dovetailing with Israeli proposals for annexing parts of the West Bank.
But Orabi also pointed to levers applied beyond diplomacy.
“Economic pressures on the Palestinian Authority, along with pressures to change school curricula, are mounting,” he said, suggesting that visa denial “is a mere pretext to erode Palestinian sovereignty”.
International reaction, he predicted, may be vocal but limited. “There will be denunciations of the decision, but it’s unlikely the international community will take effective steps to support the Palestinians.”
Instead, he urged a new diplomatic push. “Embassies must be activated, coalitions with Arab states built, and public diplomacy ramped up in influential capitals.”
Crucially, Orabi cautioned that the issue extends well beyond the UNGA attendance, where Abbas was expected to take the podium.
“The decision targets the political presence of the Palestinian people, including their representatives in the PA and the PLO,” he said. “There is an attempt to erase the Palestinian question, requiring us to exit current pathways to a comprehensive resolution.”
That exit, he clarified, is not a call for confrontation but for redefinition. “We must redefine the PA’s role, revive the PLO, and strengthen the role of Palestinian refugees in the diaspora.”
The core imperative is unity, he continued, adding that national unity should have crystallised during the genocide in Gaza. “Yet the leadership of the PLO and the PA has not taken the necessary steps,” he said.
Given mounting threats in the West Bank, Orabi warned that it is impossible to meet these challenges without true national unity.
Palestine currently holds non-member observer status, with recognition by 147 of the UN’s 193 member states.
“General Assembly votes can proceed even without the physical presence of Palestinian representatives,” he emphasised, seeking to reassure that politics need not collapse in the absence of certain delegations.
Even so, the US move appears broader than the diplomatic sphere. “Washington has frozen visas for Palestinians in general, not only diplomats,” Orabi said. “That means, for the foreseeable future, no Palestinian can travel to the United States. It smacks of a kind of McCarthyism targeting a Palestinian presence there, especially activists.”
The tightening of visas for Palestinians first filtered down on 16 August, when the State Department suspended visitor visas for people from Gaza.
Israeli-affairs analyst Ismat Mansour warned that the decision carries “grave consequences for US-Palestinian relations”.
He noted that American engagement with Palestinians had already narrowed to “a single channel” through the US ambassador, signalling “a clear rupture with the PA and its leadership”.
In that context, a blanket refusal of visas “amounts to a declaration of war on Palestinian diplomacy,” Mansour told TNA, one that not only affects the PA but “broadcasts to world capitals that the United States opposes Palestine, putting any state that supports Palestinians on a collision course with Washington”.
The chilling effect, Mansour suggested, could spread across the region. “Some countries may back away from support for fear of American reprisals,” he said.
Legally, Palestine might ask countries such as Saudi Arabia or France “to step in with support and representation,” yet such measures might “lack real momentum,” blunting their impact.
The practical result, he warned, could be a “cold diplomatic confrontation” between the PA, the United States, and Israel, one that “encourages Israel to dismiss the matter,” because the absence of Palestinian participation “weakens the overall effort”.
On the UN track, Mansour expects a US veto at the Security Council, consistent with Washington’s posture, and even threats directed at states that back the Palestinians.
The United States cannot veto a UNGA resolution, as veto power is exclusive to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which is how the US continues to automatically block resolutions.
“But a UNGA vote may see support from European countries that are friendly to Israel,” he observed, “which would isolate the American stance and expose the gap between Washington and the broader international consensus”.
Mansour called the US action “a diplomatic war and an escalation against Palestinian rights,” pointing to the denial of visas and efforts to obstruct the Palestinian delegation’s participation at UNGA as “clear American overreach”.
In response, he said, Palestinians are working “to press influential regional and global actors to help bypass this decision”. Should that fail, moving the meeting elsewhere or pursuing alternative scenarios remains on the table.
While the international community rejects the US decision, there have yet to be concrete measures against Washington, only expressions of disapproval and condemnation.
Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, framed the move within a larger arc. Palestinian-American relations, he told TNA, have always been turbulent.
“Washington has contributed to the marginalisation of the Palestinian cause since the Balfour Declaration,” he said, noting that US policy has shown “an incomprehensible hostility toward the Palestinians,” obstructing progress at every turn.
Zaki says the United States “abandoned the Oslo Accords,” and is completely and openly biased toward Israel. But despite the serious diplomatic rift, Zaki detects a shifting international sensibility.
“The global community is increasingly aware of the scale of crimes committed against the Palestinians,” he said, and there are growing calls “not to rely on the United States as the reference point in international affairs”.
And that shift could be leveraged, adds Zaki. “The PA can use this decision to enhance international support for its cause,” Zaki suggested, especially amid the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“A punitive visa regime, designed to constrict Palestinian diplomacy, may paradoxically widen the circle of sympathy for Palestinian claims at the very moment the world is watching,” Zaki concludes.
This article is published in collaboration with Egab