The United States said on Thursday that it would refuse visas for officials of the Palestinian authority, while the American allies are heading for the recognition of the Palestinian state.
The sanctions come after several states, including France and Canada, have announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state in the United Nations General Assembly in September, exasperating Israel and the United States.
The refusals of American visa could complicate the attendance of the meeting by Palestinian leaders.
France and Saudi Arabia have sponsored this week a United Nations conference conceived to resuscitate the old idea of the decades of a solution to two states, with the argument that only Israeli and Palestinian states coexisting side by side can bring peace to the Middle East.
Learn more: The water start Gaza Water Pipeline Project
The United States, which rejects any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, described the conference an insult to people killed in the surprise attack on October 7, 2023 which sparked the current Israeli military operation in all Gaza.
The State Department did not specify who was targeted in this new action, only saying that it would refuse visas to the “members” of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the “civil servants” of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Organizations “take measures to internationalize his conflict with Israel, for example through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” the State Department said in a statement.
He also accused groups of “continuing to support terrorism, including the incentive and glorification of violence” and of “providing payments and advantages in support of terrorism to Palestinian terrorists and their families”.
The United States announced in June sanctions against four judges at the ICC, saying that their indictment of Israeli leaders during the war in Gaza was politically oriented.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Gideon Saar, praised the new American sanctions, saying that the gesture displayed “moral clarity”.
The Palestinian Authority Mahmud Abbas has been widely recognized for years as a key partner in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The AP is a civil ruling authority in the regions of the West Bank occupied by the Israelis, where around three million Palestinians live – as well as about half a million Israelis occupying the colonies considered illegal under international law. Hamas governs the Gaza Strip.
OLP is an umbrella group of Palestinian organizations but does not include Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007. Founded in 1964, it was led for decades by Yasser Arafat.
Read also: Great Britain warns Israel that it will recognize the Palestinian state while Gaza’s famine spreads
The Arab and Western countries want the Palestinian authority currently weak to play a role in Gaza’s governance once the war is over.
President Donald Trump is an unconditional supporter of Israel and met three times in the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since his return to power in January, even though Trump has been looking for an elusive cease-fire in Gaza.
The United States has criticized Palestinian authority as ineffective and corrupt.
Saar echoes the State Department, accusing the Palestinian authority of paying “terrorists” and their families for attacks against Israeli targets and of encouraging people against Israel in schools, textbooks, mosques and the Palestinian media.
“This important action by President Trump and his administration also exposes the moral distortion of certain countries that have rushed to recognize a virtual Palestinian state while closing the support of AP to terrorism and incentive,” wrote Saar on X.
