On 16 September 2026, the United States of America (U.S.) announced that it will renew its 2025 “sanctions that deny visas to [Palestine Liberation Organisation] members and [Palestinian Authority] officials”. The intention is to isolate Palestinian political representatives from the UN framework, and to prevent the President of the State of Palestine from attending and delivering his address at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, whose General Debate will take place from 22 to 28 September 2026.
The U.S. has renewed these sanctions claiming that the State of Palestine initiated and supported “actions at international organizations that undermine and contradict prior commitments in support of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338”. The U.S. further alleges that the State of Palestine took “actions to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ), seeking to bypass negotiations through seeking unilateral recognition, and continuing to pay stipends to terrorists and to glorify acts of terrorism and terrorists in public pronouncements and school textbooks”.
Al-Haq condemns the U.S. decision to deny and revoke visas for members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Palestinian Authority ahead of the 81st UN General Assembly in New York next week. This unlawful act violates the 1947 Headquarters Agreement under which the U.S. committed to ensure that State officials enjoy unimpeded access to and from the UN Headquarters. In punishing the PLO and the State of Palestine for ‘internationalizing’ the conflict, the U.S. is seeking to consolidate Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
The U.S. position is also blatantly contradictory, the U.S. being the lead actor in the so-called Board of Peace, an illegitimate international U.S.-led governing body, which seeks, with Israel’s support, to manage the continuing genocide in Gaza through a de facto occupation force, the International Stabilization Force (ISF). Instead of punishing Israel for its genocide against the Palestinian people, President Trump’s ‘Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict (’20-point plan’), rewards it by facilitating foreign annexation of Gaza and exploitation of Palestinian natural resources.
Astonishingly, the U.S. further refers measures taken by the State of Palestine that “glorify acts of terrorism and terrorists in public pronouncements and textbooks”, conveniently turning a blind eye to Israel’s attempts to erase the Palestinian collective and national identity, memory and narrative by imposing its curricula on Palestinian schools, as part of its genocide and denial Palestinian self-determination.
U.S. appeals to the primacy of negotiations have the sole purpose of excluding the application of international law to Palestine, so as to ensure the effectiveness of Israel’s illegal policies and practices. However, the realisation of Palestinian self-determination, including the end of the illegal occupation, has always been, and shall always remain, a matter of international concern and legal obligation. As much was recalled by the ICJ in its 2024 Palestine Advisory Opinion. There the Court reiterated that the subject-matter of the General Assembly’s request for an Advisory Opinion was not a bilateral matter between Israel and the State of Palestine, particularly given that the Palestine question is a matter of particular interest and concern to the United Nations: “It has been described by the General Assembly as ‘a permanent responsibility towards the question of Palestine until the question is resolved in all its aspects in a satisfactory manner in accordance with international legitimacy’” (para 35).
The present sanctions illustrate the U.S.’s deepening complicity in Israeli crimes. These renewed sanctions are central to the joint U.S.-Israel effort aimed at silencing Palestinian voices and narratives over Israeli violations. In July and September 2025 the U.S. introduced far-reaching and damaging sanctions against Addameer, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, as leading Palestinian human rights organisations seeking international justice and accountability at the ICC.
The U.S. has also brought a series of wide-reaching and damaging sanctions against the ICC and its personnel. ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan was unable to brief the UN Security Council in person on the Situation in Darfur in January 2026 or the Situation in Libya in May 2026, and has affirmed that this was due to the non-issuance of a U.S. visa required for her travel. International civil society have previously stressed the necessity for the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties to revisit its decision to hold its 2026 meeting in New York rather than The Hague, noting that: “The current environment in the United States, the unlawful use of sanctions against ICC officials and civil society organisations cooperating with the Court, the ongoing threats of institutional sanctions, and the extensive visa restrictions make full, meaningful, inclusive, effective and safe civil society participation in New York impossible in practice”.
Nothing either prevents Palestine from seeking international recognition, which does not have to be coordinated with Israel and constitutes the exercise by the Palestinian people of self-determination, which encompasses the right to freely determine its political status and the right to an independent and sovereign State.
It is imperative to protect the functions and immunity of State representatives at the UN and, by extension, the UN itself. This entails categorically rejecting the possibility that the U.S. is permitted to arbitrarily decide who may and may not address the UN General Assembly, one of the main international fora where substantive issues of international law are discussed. By again blocking Palestinian representatives from accessing the UN, the U.S. is abusing its position to extort and silence the Palestinian people, and quash Palestinian self-determination.
We urge the United Nations to relocate this year’s General Assembly session to Geneva to ensure Palestinian participation and to initiate the process of relocating its headquarters to a country that respects the United Nations Charter, while guaranteeing equal participation for all.
In light of the above, we call on States to reject U.S. visa sanctions against Palestinian representatives as arbitrary and unlawful, and to take urgent and meaningful action to protect and facilitate the amplification of demands for the enforcement of international law against Israel, the unlawful Occupying Power and its accomplices.