RAMALLAH, West Bank — In a new step against his political rivals, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has revoked the diplomatic passports of several former officials. They include Nasser al-Qudwa, a former Palestinian Authority Minister of Foreign Affairs who also served as Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations for 20 years; Yasser Abed Rabbo, a fomer aid to Abbas and secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization; Bassam Abu Sharif, a former political adviser to late President Yasser Arafat and members of the dissolved Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

Abbas’ moves come under a legal amendment he issued Feb. 3, altering the conditions for granting and withdrawing diplomatic passports. The legislation gives Abbas the authority to grant diplomatic passports to anyone he wishes, by expanding the category of eligible beneficiaries. He has been using it to reward his loyalists and punish his critics. 

The provision set forth several conditions for withdrawing a diplomatic passport, such as “losing Palestinian nationality," conviction of a "felony involving moral turpitude or dishonesty, losing the capacity under which the diplomatic passport was acquired or having used the diplomatic passport in committing a crime punishable by law.”

A clause of the amendment provides that those who “support or advocate for an external or internal party against the State of Palestine and its constitutional institutions, or threaten its national interests, constitutional stability, order and civil peace,” shall be stripped of their diplomatic passport.