Editorial | Resist Trump on Palestine

America’s decision to deny or revoke visas to Palestinian officials, including Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, to attend this month’s United Nations general assembly meeting in New York is not only a violation of the spirit of its headquarters agreement with the UN.

It is a cynical attempt to mute Palestinian voices on the global stage and weaken diplomatic momentum on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question. In the process, the Americans are also handing Benjamin Netanyahu extremist government carte blanche to continue its utter destruction of Gaza, and the starvation of Palestinian residents of the strip, who, according to the UN, are suffering famine.

Indeed, quite sadly, Israel has been accused by too many credible voices of perpetrating genocide in Gaza – a claim that the Israelis reject.

The behaviour of the United States shouldn’t be a deterrent to other countries from taking principled action on the War in Gaza, and the Palestinian issue more broadly. In that regard, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), whose independent members recognise a sovereign Palestine, should tell France, Britain, France, Canada and Australia to resist the United States and to proceed with their plan to do the same thing at this month’s general assembly session. For, it would be unreasonable if they blamed the Palestinians for lack of progress on resolving issues on the co-existence of Israel and an independent Palestine. Mr Netanyahu and his right-wing allies are increasingly emerging, in this period, as the real impediments to progress.

The war in Gaza erupted in October 2023 after Hamas, the militant group that controlled Gaza, staged a cross-border incursion into Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 200 of them hostage. But what was widely recognised as legitimate Israeli retaliation and act of self-defence, has descended into something that is morally indefensible.

END POUNDING

About 50 of the hostages are believed to be still held by Hamas and should be immediately, and unconditionally, released. Israel, too, must end its unconscionable pounding of a devastated Gaza.

Already, in 22 months of war, most buildings in Gaza – a featureless, 25-mile long narrow strip of land, have been obliterated. More than 63,000 of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.1 million have been killed and over 150,000 injured. Hundreds of more bodies are believed to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Additionally, Israel has choked the flow of water, food, fuel, medicine and electricity into Gaza, resulting in the famine about which the international community complains.

In the meantime, the United States and the Israeli government have promoted the idea of Gazans leaving the territory, while Israel expands the war, with the idea of full occupation of the territory. At the same time, Israel has approved a massive new expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, which would make a viable Palestinian state near to impossible.

That was part of the context in which America’s G7 partners announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state, unless Israel pulled back from its more extreme actions. They also insisted on commitments to reform by the Palestinian Authority and exclusion of Hamas – already effectively destroyed as a fighting force – from any role in a future Palestinian state.

No one could credibly argue that either Mr Mahmoud, the PA president or the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), a long-standing foe of Hamas, are the ones who have placed impediments in the path of fulfilling the principles set out by some of America’s G7 partners for recognition of the Palestinian state. It is Mr Netanyahu and his colleagues who, with practised deliberation, failed to row back their policies.

BAN ON TRAVEL

Yet, last week, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, announced the ban on travel to the United States by Mr Mahmoud and officials of the PLO and the PA, to attend the meeting of the general assembly. The Palestinians could be represented at the session by the PLO’s observer mission at the UN.

According to the State Department, the action was aimed at holding the PLO and the PA “accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace” and failing to “consistently repudiate terrorism”, including the Hamas attack on Israel.

The Americans also want the Palestinians to end their diplomatic moves to have the state recognised, as well as their support for other countries’ efforts at International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to have Israel and Mr Netanyahu declared to be engaged in genocide and for breaches of other humanitarian laws.

Happily, the Americans stopped short of scolding the Palestinians for not acquiescing to the suggestions for the departure from Gaza and allowing the strip to be rebuilt, as Donald Trump put, as the riviera of the Middle East.

Essentially, the Americans are attempting to delegitimise the initiative on Palestine’s recognition, being led by Emanuel Macron, France’s president, and ultimately, the two-state solution - at least in the context in which it has been framed in Security Council resolutions.

These countries and their leaders shouldn’t allow themselves to be bullied by Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu.