The decision came after the United States revoked Abbas's entry visa, preventing him and several members of the Palestinian Authority and PLO delegations from entering the United States to participate in the General Assembly meetings in New York.
During the voting session, 145 member states of the General Assembly supported the draft resolution authorizing Abbas to participate via video recording, while five countries opposed it (Israel, the United States, Paraguay, Palau, and Nauru), and six other countries abstained from voting (Hungary, Fiji, North Macedonia, Panama, Albania, and Papua New Guinea).
At the end of last August, the US State Department announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had decided to revoke the entry visas of Abbas and a number of Palestinian Authority and PLO officials, ahead of the annual General Assembly meetings next week.
This decision was issued on the same day that the Israeli occupation army declared the Gaza Strip a war zone.
The Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported that the resolution allows Palestine to "deliver statements via video, or to submit a pre-recorded statement at the sessions of the high-level conference on the settlement of the Palestinian issue and the two-state solution."
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It was also allowed to “submit pre-recorded statements to its President or other high-level representative at any high-level meeting or conference of the United Nations and international meetings, held under the auspices of the General Assembly, or as appropriate if representatives of the State of Palestine are prevented from participating in United Nations meetings.”
The agency explained that the procedures of this resolution are only in effect during the 80th session of the General Assembly, stressing the need to enable representatives of the State of Palestine to participate in person in relevant meetings at the United Nations in New York.
Meanwhile, the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, commended the position of the countries that "voted in favor of the resolution, which calls on the host country to fulfill and respect its obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement, particularly Article 11, which stipulates that we grant visas whether we agree or disagree with the host country on certain issues, and which does not give the host country the right or privilege to abuse its authority by denying US visas."
Mansour expressed his hope that "this decision will be reversed as soon as possible, and that the host country will extend the visas for the Palestinian delegation, because we have the right to be with you all, and this deprivation is a punishment for the State of Palestine and should not happen," according to what was reported by WAFA.
