Mustafa Barghouti, founder of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) which is part of the PLO, said the US was targeting the wrong side.<\/p>\n
He told the BBC: “Trump’s administration, instead of punishing the criminals who are committing war crimes in Gaza and in the West Bank, which is Israel, is instead\u2026 punishing the victim, which is the Palestinian people.”<\/p>\n
Israel welcomed the sanctions and thanked US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for imposing them.<\/p>\n
“This important action by [President Trump] and his administration also exposes the moral distortion of certain countries that ran to recognise a virtual Palestinian state while turning a blind eye to its support for terror and incitement,” said foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar.<\/p>\n
The PA has always rejected complaints around “salaries” saying the payments are stipends to the families of all Palestinian prisoners held under Israel’s military occupation, many of whom are not given any due process and are held in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. <\/p>\n
Palestinians see all those detained by Israel and jailed by its military courts, which have a 99 per cent conviction rate, as political prisoners. French officials said last week the PA had expressed its willingness to end these payments in response to France’s commitment to recognise a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n
This week’s UN conference further isolated the US in its support for the way Israel has continued the war in Gaza, which many countries criticised at the meeting. <\/p>\n
The conference exposed a strategic vacuum being left by Washington that had traditionally led diplomatic efforts towards a viable longer-term peace between Israelis and Palestinians.<\/p>\n
The travel ban on Palestinian officials may be meant as a more limited broadside than a full range of financial sanctions. It is already a complex and lengthy process for PA and PLO officials to obtain visas to travel to the US, requiring special exemptions which are rarely given. <\/p>\n
It is not yet clear whether the move would affect any officials working for the Palestinian mission to the United Nations in New York. The current Palestinian ambassador to the UN and his deputy are both US citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mustafa Barghouti, founder of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) which is part of the PLO, said the US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-307936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114950779891774389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}