He has been the permanent observer of Palestine at the United Nations for more than two decades, and earlier this year intended to run for the presidency of the General Assembly, although bent After American pressure.
The Guardian I mentioned On Tuesday, the US State Department sent a diplomatic cable to the US Embassy in Jerusalem ordering it to pressure the Palestinian Authority – the ruling body in the occupied West Bank – to withdraw its offer to one of the General Assembly’s 21 vice presidents as well.
The Vice-Presidents of the General Assembly have a role in setting the body’s agenda and replacing the President in his absence. The United Nations is scheduled to hold elections among the members of the Assembly on June 2.
The US cable said that Mansour “has a history of accusing Israel of genocide” — as have leading human rights groups and experts — and that his presence would “undermine” the goals of President Donald Trump’s so-called “peace council” in Gaza, which a recent Human Rights Watch report said has not kept its promises to provide aid to the Palestinians and has allowed Israeli forces to continue killing them with little resistance despite a ceasefire.
The cable said: “We will hold the Palestinian Authority responsible if the Palestinian delegation does not withdraw its membership.” [vice presidential] “Nomination” by Friday, “and the consequences will follow.”
The telegram threatened to cancel US visas for all Palestinian officials. The United States had already rescinded most of them last August, but backed away from the ban on those who were visiting the country as part of the annual UN summit. “It would be unfortunate if we had to reconsider any available options,” the cable said.
It also threatened that Israel would continue to withhold tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, which the far-right Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, blocked at the beginning of the war in October 2023. The funds withheld by Israel represent 60% of the Palestinian Authority’s revenues.
Someone familiar with the matter He told NPR Specifically, Mansour will refrain from running for office during the next two years, which has been interpreted as a signal of the end of Trump’s term as president.
The United States is prohibited from preventing UN officials from visiting the organization’s headquarters in New York under a 1947 agreement. However, the United States has denied visas to officials from enemy countries, including Russia and Iran, as well as former PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
Hadi Amr, who served as a senior State Department official for Palestinian affairs under the Obama and Biden administrations, told NPR that expulsions of diplomats are extremely rare outside of “extreme situations like Russian espionage or election interference.”
“In general, it is counterproductive because you need diplomats to solve problems between countries, and by expelling diplomats, you not only undermine their ability to solve problems, but you also undermine the capabilities of the United States,” Amr said.
Tawfiq Al-Ghussein, a researcher based in London specializing in the history of the modern Middle East and the displacement of Palestinians, He said On social media, “the importance of this is not merely procedural.”
Al-Ghussein said: “Washington is actually trying to prevent even symbolic Palestinian institutional emergence within the UN system because it realizes that international legitimacy is important politically, legally and diplomatically.” “The position of Palestinian Vice President in the General Assembly will not change the reality of power on the ground, but it will normalize demands for a Palestinian state within the same international governance structure. This is exactly what the United States is trying to prevent.”
He continued: “The irony is extraordinary: the same power that ceaselessly lectures the world about democracy and international order threatens visas and diplomatic consequences to prevent Palestinians from occupying a largely ceremonial role at the United Nations.” “It reveals once again that the issue was never ‘peace negotiations’ per se, but rather control over who is allowed institutional legitimacy in the international system.”
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