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The Palestinian activist said she had applied, as many times before, for a B-1/B-2 visa, which is for either business or tourism travel to the U.S.
Veteran Palestinian activist, negotiator, and academic Hanan Ashrawi, 72, said on Monday she had been denied a United States (U.S.) travel visa for the first time, and viewed it as retaliation for her criticism of the Trump administration and Israel.
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“It is official! My U.S. visa application has been rejected. No reason was given,” Ashrawi tweeted, adding that the current “administration has decided I do not deserve to set foot in the U.S,” based on her history as a Pro-Palestinian activist and outspoken critic of human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli government.
The Palestinian activist said she had applied for a B-1/B-2 visa, which is for either business or tourism travel to the U.S. A State Department official declined to respond to a Reuters query about Ashrawi’s statements, citing confidentiality for visa records but saying that “visas may be denied only on grounds set out in U.S. law.”
Ashrawi is a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's Executive Committee and took part in interim peace talks with Israel dating back to the 1960s. During Trump’s administration, she has been very critical of the U.S. unilateral stance favoring Israel, difficulting any sort of peace process.
“Most of my life, I’ve been going back and forth, meeting people, speaking everywhere. This is new,” she said. “They (the Trump administration) are trying to punish us.”
5/Most of all, I have no tolerance for the Israeli occupation in all its manifestations as a most pervasive form of oppression, dispossession & denial; I have no respect for the enablers of this inhuman condition nor for its apologists;
— Hanan Ashrawi (@DrHananAshrawi) 13 de mayo de 2019
In a January 2018 statement, she said that “we will not be blackmailed,” regarding the illegal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, adding that “Donald Trump has not only violated international law, but he has also single-handedly destroyed the very foundations of peace and condoned Israel’s illegal annexation of the city.”
About a month ago, on April 10, co-founder of the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Omar Barghouti was denied entry into the U.S. An airline staff at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel informed him that he wasn't allowed to board his plane to New York, missing planned conferences at different universities in the U.S. and most importantly his daughters wedding.
“With this denial of entry, Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding, this time to repress Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders,” he added.
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