Senior PLO Official Says US Refusing Her a Visa

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, says the United States is refusing her entry. “It is official! My US visa application has been rejected. No reason given,” she wrote on Twitter. Ashrawi, a veteran negotiator, former cabinet minister and longtime adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, assumed her political views were behind the rejection. “I’m over 70 & a grandmother; I’ve been an activist for Palestine since the late 1960s; I’ve always been an ardent supporter of nonviolent resistance,” she said in a tweet. A vocal critic of the US approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, she often spars on social media with President Donald Trump’s Mideast team. Her daughter and grandchildren live in the US, and she says she travels there several times a year, often meeting with senior officials and appearing regularly on news programs. A State Department spokesperson refused to comment on Ashrawi’s visa application.