Trump’s political gift to the Palestinian leadership

By: Hassan Asfour

On August 29, 2025 the U.S. State Department issued a statement announcing a ban on the entry of President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian officials, in their official capacities rather than by name, from attending the United Nations General Assembly session and therefore the Two-State conference. The reason given was their failure to “condemn terrorism, including October 7, and the pursuit of Israel at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and the educational curricula that incite,” all cited as elements harmful to “U.S. national security.”

The elements of the U.S. travel ban form a textual document showing that the Trump administration is leading a campaign of collective cleansing against the Palestinian people — not only by what it states but by what it entirely ignores about all the actions of the Jewish state before October 7, 2023: Judaization, annexation, the establishment of armed settler militias — actions that several members of Congress, across both parties, rejected — and not least what followed: absolute cover-up, including a starvation campaign that shook humanity everywhere except the White House and the contemporary fascist state.

The document banning President Abbas and official figures from New York came as a unique opportunity — perhaps unexpectedly — to restore “the heat of political blood” to Palestinian politics, after it had been struck by a cancerous condition that paralyzed every aspect of mobilization, as if what is happening on and around Palestinian land is not its own central concern.

The U.S. ban, with its explicit pretexts, is like the cry of a train racing at record speed — not to prevent a sovereign presence but to erase Palestinian existence — after the contemporary revolution succeeded in building the first national entity on Palestinian soil, through the extraordinary political capacity of the revolutionary leadership, the organization and its founding leader Yasser Arafat, when signing the 1993 “Declaration of Principles” as the cornerstone that broke the Talmudic narrative — whose sheen Hamas restored on October 7.

The U.S. ban is an explicit announcement that the political illusion about America’s role and stance as a principal partner in making peace in the region has collapsed into the mire of Rubio’s statement, and it is logical that a different vision needs to be rebuilt — not by demanding confrontation with it because one must or should, but because the official Arab reality pleads with it to be its guardian and protector.

It is perhaps no coincidence in timing that the U.S. ban coincided with the day of revealing the plan of the Zionist fascist state to impose sovereignty over the West Bank and begin forming “secessionist emirates” as an alternative to a Palestinian polity, exposing the compatibility of U.S. activity with the Judaization objective.

The U.S. ban should be a direct incentive for President Abbas to stop the patchwork politics that prevail in managing the official institutions themselves, to end the rotation of problems without solving them, and to move immediately to convene a genuine meeting to create a “political leadership” to confront the final stages of existence — to stop “leading as bureaucrats” lacking legitimacy in all their components, to remove all political algae, and to make clear that Hamas is not part of the national component.

A compact working leadership, not subject to personal loyalties that have prevailed since the election of President Mahmoud Abbas in March 2005 and remain in effect up to the latest decree forming the committee to prepare a temporary constitution, and ending the era of “political whim” — a necessary step if a real confrontation is to be waged — should be tasked immediately to:

• Prepare a comprehensive paper outlining the Palestinian vision for peace, drawing on everything from the Declaration of Principles up to the present.
• Produce a paper reviewing the position of the Israeli state since the assassination of Rabin up to the latest Knesset decision that views Palestinian states as an existential threat.
• Create an internal mobilization mechanism to rally energies to confront the war of existence.
• Establish a working mechanism with Arab officialdom based on defining clear positions for what is to come — not only regarding the ban on travel to New York but concerning the mechanism for recognition of the State of Palestine.
• Prepare a paper on the Two-State conference linking recognition of the State of Palestine to the punishment of the occupying state.
• Formulate a position paper demanding the suspension of the occupying state’s membership in the United Nations, restoring the characterization of the Zionist movement as a racist movement, and a decision that views Judaization and annexation as war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
• Activate the International Court of Justice decision on the nature of the occupation.
• Compile a list of the names of all war criminals, not limited to the Gaza war but including the leaders of the Judaization campaign in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Additional decisions:

* Suspend mutual recognition between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the occupying state.

* Request that Arab states with relations with the entity withdraw their ambassadors from Tel Aviv.

* Cease all “privileges” granted to the occupying state and its citizens by normalization countries.

Procedural steps

– Request that the United Nations hold the General Assembly at its alternate headquarters in Geneva.

– Convene the Global Two-State Conference at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, reinforcing France’s position.

Rapid mobilization can turn the “U.S. ban” into a political gift that restores Palestinian activism to the forefront in an effective, not passive, way.

Note: I wish some of our local — and before that some Arab — media who act as if they are trumpeting the truth about the extermination war on the people of Gaza every time a soldier of the fascist army is wounded would stop: the Jews intend to distract people from the greater crime. They start the empty drowning that serves the enemy’s next plan. Do you understand or are you aware and simply serving the teachers? This needs real Gazan grit.

Special note: It is shameful — indeed a disgrace — that anyone claiming to be leftist would ally with the Movement for the Destruction of the National Entity (TDNE), known as Hamas, against Fatah in West Bank elections. Whatever your position on Fatah, such an act is a crime deserving national condemnation and disavowal of its perpetrators. Shame on you.