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Some other news now. Anybody trying to travel on a document issued by the Palestinian Authority faces a newly imposed visa ban from the Trump administration. To be clear, it's always been hard for Palestinians to get visas to come to the United States. Now it's harder. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Aziz Abu Sarah is Palestinian, born and raised in Jerusalem.
AZIZ ABU SARAH: So I grew up with zero passports. We had travel documents, had many travel documents, but none of them was a real citizenship passport.
KELEMEN: A peace activist who started his own travel company, Abu Sarah became an American citizen 10 years ago, and that changed his life. But he says the visa ban will hurt many of his friends and family.
ABU SARAH: The visa ban is affecting first every peace activist I know. None of these Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza now can travel to me to speak, to do any work in the United States. So it's affecting them, affecting people in my family who hold Palestinian documents, who cannot come to visit anymore.
DIANA BUTTU: Most people I know have been trying to avoid the U.S.
KELEMEN: That's Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators.
BUTTU: They're afraid of all of the things that have been happening since the beginning of the Trump administration, of all of the detentions, the cracking down on protesters, examining people's social media. And so a lot of people I know have not even been trying to go to the U.S.
KELEMEN: She sees this as another sign that the U.S. is ignoring the Palestinians.
BUTTU: I don't think the U.S. has been engaging with Palestinians, period. I think they've been deliberately sidelining Palestinians.
KELEMEN: The U.S. refused to give a visa for the Palestinian Authority president to address the United Nations last year, and now they aren't recognizing Palestinian-issued documents. Reached by phone in Ramallah, Deputy Foreign Minister Omar Awadallah says the Trump administration has not explained why it doesn't trust passports issued by the Palestinian Authority.
OMAR AWADALLAH: All the Palestinians that they have the right to have passports, and it's up to the Americans themselves to say that, yes, I can give this one visa because he is fulfilling the requirements for visa to the U.S. or not.
KELEMEN: The State Department says Palestinians who hold other passports can still apply for visas. For instance, some have travel documents issued by Jordan. That's what Aziz Abu Sarah had before he became a U.S. citizen. But even with such exemptions, he says the ban sends the wrong message.
ABU SARAH: It's a message that says we are not trying to bring the two sides together. We have a very strong preference who we support and who we don't and Palestinians seen as the other and not welcome, then we don't want to engage with you.
KELEMEN: We meet in Jaffa, a mixed neighborhood of Jews and Arabs in Tel Aviv, along with Maoz Inon, an Israeli activist who often goes on speaking tours in the U.S. with Abu Sarah.
MAOZ INON: Many of the audience ask us, so why don't we hear more Palestinian peace activists? Why always traveling with Aziz? And we keep telling them, you are blocking them from entering your state. You don't listen to them. You oppress them. You are silencing them. So, of course, you don't hear them.
KELEMEN: Before the First Trump administration moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the consulate there was the main point of contact for the Palestinians. The embassy's cultural affairs office still organizes events with Palestinians, but there's less direct engagement with the Palestinian Authority.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
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