For the second time in two years, the United States has barred Palestinian Authority delegates and officials from attending the United Nations General Assembly (Sept. 8-28).
A Sept. 16 State Department media note similar in tone and content to one it released in July 2025 said the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the dominant force within the P.A., have failed to live up to their commitments, contradicting U.S. law.
Among the P.A.’s violations, the State Department listed its calling for action against Israel at international organizations, instigating the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) to pursue Israel, and bypassing negotiations by seeking unilateral recognition of statehood.
Ben Cohen, a research fellow specializing in international organizations at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noted that U.S. President Donald Trump, in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, underscored his opposition to the ICC. Calling it an “evil group of people,” Trump urged all member nations of the court to resign from the “rogue institution immediately.”
“Trump’s main concern is that the ICC will attempt to go after U.S. citizens and though he didn’t mention it, there’s a sense within the State Department and the U.S. mission to the U.N. that what starts with Israel will eventually filter down to the U.S.,” Cohen told JNS.
In 2018, the ICC considered investigating alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The court ultimately decided against opening a case. But it has been far more aggressive against Israel. In 2024, it issued arrest warrants for alleged war crimes against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Trump reacted swiftly after the ICC acted against Israel’s leaders. In Feb. 2025, the president imposed sanctions on ICC individuals involved in attempts to “investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute” American citizens or citizens of U.S. allies (with Israel given special mention). The administration is soon to announce sanctions against the entire ICC, Reuters reported on Monday.
The P.A. has promoted ICC investigations against Israel. In May 2018, the P.A. referred the “Situation in Palestine” to then ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Despite neither the U.S. nor Israel being signatories to the Rome Statute, the treaty that founded the court, meaning they do not fall under the court’s jurisdiction, the ICC opened an investigation against Israel in 2021.
Itamar Marcus, founder and director of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which has documented the continued and increased contacts of the P.A. with the ICC, told JNS that the P.A. has recently established a new body dedicated to preparing evidence of “Israel’s crimes” to submit to the court.
“These American sanctions are very important because the P.A. realizes that it can’t defeat Israel, neither through terror nor through negotiations,” Marcus told JNS. “For this reason, the P.A. is trying to isolate Israel by bringing the entire international community to sanction them.”
The only issue with the U.S. sanctions, he said, is that they don’t go far enough. Restricting visas may embarrass the P.A. but “the United States must punish them financially and politically for [sanctions] to have a real impact, such as freezing their bank accounts, not allowing international financial activities, etc. I hope this will be a next step, possibly after the U.S. elections,” he said.
Another driver of the U.S. decision to block Palestinian delegates is the P.A.’s continued stipends to terrorists and its lionizing of terror acts in public announcements and its school curriculum. “It is in our national interest to impose consequences and hold the PLO and P.A. accountable for glorifying terrorism,” the State Department said in its statement.
Under pressure, the P.A. claimed in Feb. 2025 that it had ended pay-for-slay, its program of paying terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis. It set up a new body under the Ministry of Social Development that would pay P.A. prisoners based solely on their socioeconomic status, not for their acts of terrorism, the P.A. claimed.
The U.S. was not deceived. “Shifting these payments to a welfare system does not count. Palestinian terrorists must stop receiving any type of salaries or benefits as a direct result of their acts of terrorism,” a U.S. Embassy spokesperson told JNS in late January.
The P.A. has tried to “dance around and wriggle out of the Taylor Force Act,” Cohen said of the U.S. law passed in 2018 which prohibits U.S. economic aid to the P.A. until it stops payments to terrorists. “The fundamental problem here is the P.A. hasn’t changed. It is still rewarding both terrorists and the families of terrorists.”
The U.S. is “rather isolated” in demanding P.A. reform, he said. “The only country that has taken this issue seriously, the issue of pay-to-slay, is the United States. Europe hasn’t been moved by the same concerns. Europe continues to be a major donor to the P.A.”
The P.A. has made no sign of backing down from its lawfare strategy, which its Foreign Ministry characterized in a Sept. 17 statement as “a legitimate and peaceful means of protecting our rights. ... We firmly reject the claim that pursuing Palestinian rights through the United Nations and international courts undermines peace.”
The Palestinians “want to try to wait out Trump,” dreaming that they’ll reach a point where the stars will align in their favor, Cohen explained. “They assume, perhaps not unreasonably, that whoever succeeds Trump will be more understanding of their position. But for the next two years, as long as this president is in office, absent a real verifiable reform by the P.A., they will continue to be frozen out by the Americans.”
