In a display of diplomatic strong arm tactics, the administration of President Donald Trump has threatened to revoke the visas of the entire Palestinian delegation to the United Nations unless the Palestinian ambassador withdraws his candidacy for a vice‑presidential post in the General Assembly. A leaked State Department cable, dated 19 May and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” instructs US diplomats in Jerusalem to deliver an explicit ultimatum: drop the bid or face “consequences” that include the revocation of travel documents for Palestinian officials serving at the UN.
The weaponisation of visa policy to punish diplomatic representation is not new for this White House. Last year, the Trump administration denied visas to top Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas, ahead of the UN General Assembly. Yet the current threat goes a decisive step further. It targets the accredited Palestinian mission in New York itself, effectively threatening to sever the only official channel through which the Palestinian people can raise their plight before the international body that sits just miles from the White House.
The leaked cable is remarkable for its bluntness. It describes Ambassador Riyad Mansour, a career diplomat who has served as the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN since 2005 as someone with “a history of accusing Israel of genocide.” Instead of refuting the substance of that accusation, the cable simply declares that Mansour’s bid “fuels tension” and risks undermining Trump’s so‑called “peace plan” for Gaza, a plan that most of the world has already dismissed as dead on arrival. “A bully pulpit for Mansour would not improve the lives of Palestinians and would significantly damage US relations with the PA [Palestinian Authority],” the cable warns. “Congress will take it extremely seriously.”
The right to political expression, even within the hallowed halls of the UN General Assembly is conditional on not offending the sensibilities of Washington or its ally in Tel Aviv. The cable also notes that the State Department’s September 2025 decision to waive visa sanctions for Palestinian officials assigned to the UN mission would be “unfortunate to have to revisit.”
This is not the first time Ambassador Mansour has been bulldozed by American pressure. In February 2026, he withdrew his candidacy for the presidency of the UN General Assembly after intensive US lobbying. That retreat was sold as a diplomatic accommodation to preserve the chance of a lesser role. Now, even that consolation prize is being snatched away. The cable admits that if Mansour were to be elected to one of the 16 vice‑presidential slots, a largely ceremonial position that would nonetheless allow him to preside over General Assembly sessions, “there is still a risk that the Palestinians could preside over GA sessions during UNGA81,” referring to the 81st annual high‑level week scheduled for September.
The cable’s paranoia reaches a fever pitch when it imagines a “worst‑case scenario” in which the next President of the General Assembly might allow the Palestinian delegation to preside over high‑profile sessions related to the Middle East. The fear is that a Palestinian diplomat might, for a few hours, sit in the chair at the podium. For that sin, the entire Palestinian mission is to be punished, its diplomats barred from entering the country that hosts the United Nations, a flagrant violation of the UN Headquarters Agreement of 1947.
The 1947 Headquarters Agreement between the United States and the United Nations explicitly prohibits the US from blocking UN officials from entering the country to conduct their official business. The United States has long made exceptions to this principle, denying visas to Iranian and Russian officials on “national security” grounds, and to Yasser Arafat in 1988. But the threat to revoke the visas of an entire accredited delegation for the sole reason of a candidate’s political views is a new low. Hady Amr, a former senior State Department official who served under both the Obama and Biden administrations, called the move “counterproductive” and “extremely rare.” “Generally, short of extreme situations like Russian espionage or election interference, using visa restrictions as you are reporting is extremely rare because you need diplomats to work out problems,” Amr told NPR. “By expelling diplomats, you’re undermining not only their ability to solve problems, but the abilities of the United States as well.”
The same week the cable was leaked, Israeli forces continued to occupy more than half of Gaza’s territory, demolished entire neighbourhoods, and imposed a suffocating blockade that has reduced 2.3 million people to conditions of starvation and disease. The October 2025 ceasefire, already a fiction, has been broken daily by Israeli strikes that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.
The election of the UN General Assembly president and the 16 vice‑presidents is scheduled for 2 June. The Palestinians, who hold observer state status (the same as the Holy See), compete within the Asia‑Pacific group for one of the vice‑presidential slots. Washington has set a deadline of 22 May for the withdrawal of Mansour’s candidacy, determined to ensure that the Palestinian delegation does not secure even the symbolic platform that a vice‑presidency would provide.
The Palestinian mission, for its part, has insisted on its right to participate in the election, while acknowledging the pressure. According to a person familiar with the matter, the Palestinian UN delegation relayed through an Arab country that Ambassador Mansour would refrain from running, a decision described as a potential reference to the end of Trump’s term.