In December 1988 the then US government under President Ronald Reagan refused to grant a visa to Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who had wanted to travel to New York to address the UN General Assembly’s annual debate on the Question of Palestine. The reason given by Secretary of State George Shultz at the time was that Mr. Arafat condoned terrorism. Thirty-seven years later, it is the government of US President Donald Trump that has revoked the visa of Palestinian Authority President, and PLO Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, who wants to address the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2025. The reason given by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is that the Palestinian leadership has been inciting terrorism.
Some things do not change and a sense of déjà-vu cannot be avoided. Of course, we are not talking about letting into the US any representatives of Hamas, like the ones the US has been negotiating with about a Gaza ceasefire in Qatar or Egypt. Nor would it be the first time that Mr. Abbas would address the UN General Assembly. He was there most recently in September 2024 and spoke of the war in Gaza as a full-scale genocide. An ailing and over-stayed leader, Mr. Abbas still leads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and cannot be accused of mounting any kind of terrorist activity or armed resistance to the Israeli occupation, quite the contrary.
According to the 1947 treaty between the UN and the US on the hosting of the UN Headquarters (UNHQ) in New York, the US has the obligation to allow unimpeded access to the UNHQ territory, which enjoys a special semi-autonomous status. Otherwise, the US would be able to prevent access to UNHQ by countries that it has no good bilateral relations with, like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and even Canada or Denmark these days. This would not allow such countries to participate in the General Assembly, the Security Council and other key organs of the UN, severely compromising their UN membership. Even if Palestine is only an observer state and not a full UN member yet, it still has a formal association and certain rights with the organization, like the Vatican does, which is also a UN observer state.
The UN’s reaction to the 1988 visa refusal was to move the specific General Assembly meeting to the UN’s second headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, where Yasser Arafat could deliver his address in person. This is the least the General Assembly could do again, so that Mr. Abbas and Palestine can be heard. Of course, in our day and age there is also the possibility of zooming Mr. Abbas in via teleconference. That would defeat the purpose, though, of having the actual world leaders present and interacting during the UNGA high-level week, an annual global village ritual that also includes bilateral talks and other face-to-face side events involving the leaders.
Moving the specific General Assembly meeting to Geneva would not only involve Mr. Abbas, unlike Mr. Arafat earlier, as this year’s move would take place in the framework of the UNGA high-level week that typically brings together over a hundred top world leaders and many other senior officials. If the whole high-level week was moved out of New York that would clearly indicate the unacceptability of the US attitude to the majority of the UN membership. It would also put on the table the lurking issue of moving the entire UNHQ out of the US, to ensure unhindered universality in participation and to minimize unilateral bullying and coercion. This may be an organic move, anyway, as eventually the UNHQ should get closer to the largest part of the human population that is located in the Global South. A first move to Geneva now could be followed by a more permanent solution, after due consideration of all available options.
The response to the current visa refusal by the US should also include a General Assembly decision to not recognize the credentials of the Netanyahu government, which is broadly perceived to pursue policies of apartheid and genocide against the occupied Palestinian people. The UN membership of Israel would thus freeze till there is another Israeli government that abides by its obligations under the UN Charter and international law.
The Russian and US governments would also deserve to have their memberships frozen by UNGA, for several reasons each one of them but certainly the former for its invasion of Ukraine and the latter for its complicity to the Gaza genocide and for bullying the world with tariffs and more. Disciplining two permanent members of the UN Security Council is probably too big a bite for a weak UN to chew, though, so for now expelling the Israeli government would do, as the most egregious case of systematic international / humanitarian law violation by a UN member state that is also a recognized occupying power with relevant responsibilities.
Dr. Georgios Kostakos, a former UN Secretariat official, is Executive Director of the Brussels-based Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS) and a Research Associate of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).
