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As satellite leaders are preparing to stitchery successful New York for the 80th league of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) successful September, 1 federation volition not person immoderate representatives: the Palestinian people. That is due to the fact that the United States Department of State has decided to contradict visas to Palestinian officials seeking to be the UNGA session.
Since 1947, the US has mostly honoured its “headquarters agreement” with the UN, granting visas — albeit constricted successful scope — to officials from astir the satellite invited to be UN meetings. There person been occasions, however, wherever the US has utilized its presumption arsenic a UNGA big to contradict visas to overseas diplomats from countries it wished to isolate, specified arsenic Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others.
In the lawsuit of Palestine, this is not the archetypal clip Palestinian leaders person faced a visa denial. In 1988, Yasser Arafat, the person of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was besides not allowed to travel to the UN to enactment successful the UNGA, with the US authorities justifying its determination with “security threats”.
Today, the Trump medication is offering a akin justification, claiming the determination reflects US “national information interests” and accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) of “not complying with their commitments, and … undermining the prospects for peace”.
The authoritative US rationale that the PA has failed to repudiate “terrorism”, including the October 7, 2023 attacks, is flimsy. Under President Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian enactment has consistently condemned “terrorism”, including the attacks, and has gone adjacent further by supporting the French-Saudi connection that called for Hamas’s disarmament.
It is important to retrieve that the PA was created by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were signed astatine the White House by Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with US President Bill Clinton hosting the ceremony. In the pursuing years, the PA received important enactment from Washington, including a important magnitude of funds, and went on with immoderate US-led bid initiative.
In this regard, to impeach the PA of “undermining the prospects for peace” is simply absurd. The crushed for the visa denials intelligibly lies elsewhere.
The Trump administration’s determination coincides with a planetary infinitesimal wherever leaders of respective Western countries person expressed their volition to recognise Palestine astatine the UNGA this month. It is expected that by the extremity of September, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Portugal, and Malta whitethorn articulation the 147 UN subordinate states that already recognise Palestinian statehood.
The Trump medication has been pressuring these countries not to spell guardant with their plan. Since that whitethorn not work, Washington is apt trying to contradict the Palestinians an accidental to observe this infinitesimal and a level to talk retired astir the continuing Israeli atrocities successful Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu volition beryllium welcomed with unfastened arms successful the US. Despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing a warrant for his arrest, Netanyahu has been the astir predominant impermanent astatine the White House since Trump’s inauguration; helium volition besides beryllium successful attendance astatine the UNGA. Curiously, successful 2013, the US authorities denied a visa to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, citing his ICC apprehension warrant.
While denying the Palestinians a level astatine the UN, the US has besides been complicit successful the Israeli run to soundlessness Palestinian journalists.
The US determination to contradict Palestinian diplomats visas came conscionable 5 days aft Israel bombed Gaza’s Naser Hospital, sidesplitting 22 people, including 5 Palestinian journalists. This brought the fig of journalists Israel has killed since the commencement of the warfare to 244. The Trump medication failed to condemn the attack. Two weeks earlier, erstwhile the Israeli service targeted and killed 4 Al Jazeera journalists, the State Department appeared to endorse the Israeli communicative that they were “part of Hamas”.
This comes connected the process of the US government’s inaction connected a fig of different Israeli targeted killings of journalists, including that of elder American-Palestinian writer Shireen Abu Aqleh successful May 2022 and of my person and workfellow Nazeh Darwazeh, who was killed successful 2003 portion moving for The Associated Press.
The US is intelligibly committed to helping Israel contradict Palestinians a level and a dependable to talk to the satellite and contiguous their lawsuit for statehood.
As Matt Duss, enforcement vice president of the Washington, DC-based Center for International Policy, enactment it successful a tweet: the visa denial is “a cleanable look of decades of US argumentation toward the Palestinians: we’ll punish you for violence, but we’ll besides punish you for non-violence”.
If adjacent a compliant Palestinian assemblage that has renounced equipped conflict is not allowed to speak, past who is? Who tin talk for the Palestinians?
The existent US presumption appears to beryllium supporting the Israeli occupiers’ efforts to region Palestinians from their homeland and erase Palestinian self-determination. But you cannot privation distant an full radical from the look of the Earth, adjacent if you are the sole superpower connected it.
The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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