Forget the U.N. statehood charade. A Palestinian Authority that subsidizes terror and a population indoctrinated in Islamist hate ought to be denied entry to the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited the scorn of the world with his announcement last week that Washington was barring officials from the Palestinian Authority from entering the country to attend the meeting this month of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The move prompted the predictable outrage from critics of President Donald Trump for not playing by the rules of international behavior the foreign-policy establishment has laid down. It’s also the subject of a more serious debate about whether the decision violates the 1947 United Nations Headquarters Agreement, since that accord was passed by the U.S. Senate as a treaty, and therefore, has the force of law.
But the revocation of visas to P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the posse of corrupt kleptocrats he brings with him every year when he engages in his annual rant from the podium of the General Assembly is only part of the story. As The New York Times reported two days later, they’re not the only ones being banned from entry to America. On Aug. 18, the U.S. State Department cabled all U.S. embassies and consulates around the world not to issue visitor visas to all persons carrying passports issued by the P.A.
Rubio’s order is, as JNS senior contributing editor Ruthie Blum wrote, a gesture aimed at undermining the effort by various Western nations to use the UNGA to promote the fiction of Palestinian statehood, for which the 89-year-old Abbas, who is currently serving the 20th year of the four-year term to which he was elected back in 2005, would be a central prop.