Palestinian president delivers UN speech by video after US denies visa again

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday through prerecorded remarks from his office in Ramallah after the United States denied visas to him and other senior Palestinian officials to attend the gathering in person for the second consecutive year.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to address the assembly in person later on Thursday.Abbas, now 90, has led the Palestinian authority since 2005.The authority is the internationally recognised representative of the Palestinian people, but Abbas's support among Palestinians has declined amid years of criticism over corruption and the sometimes violent expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.Under Abbas, Palestine has been recognised as a state by a majority of UN member states.However, those largely symbolic diplomatic gains have not changed Israel's decades-long military occupation of the West Bank.The Palestinian authority has also remained largely sidelined from negotiations over Gaza's future during the ongoing war,…