Relevant context, 2019:

Israel is barring two freshman Democratic congresswomen from entering the country. Both Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib have been critical of Israel’s policies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the decision after President Trump tweeted his thoughts on the matter. Trump said it would show great weakness if Israel were to let the two lawmakers go on a trip they had planned for this weekend.

Netanyahu said that Israeli law allows authorities to bar entry to people who advocate a global movement to boycott Israel. And he said these congresswomen were going to do just that. They were going to use the trip to promote a boycott of Israel. Now, these Congresswomen do support the right to boycott Israel. They are outspoken critics of Israel. Tlaib has talked about Israel’s, quote, “racist policies.” The question here is, why this Israeli decision now to ban them? - because last month, Israel said it would let them in out of respect for Congress. It seems that the deciding factor here was Trump.

I spoke with a group associated with a Palestinian official. This group was organizing the trip, and they say that the congresswomen were going to be visiting Jerusalem and three Palestinian cities in the West Bank. And one of the organizers told me that the congresswomen wanted to see the impact of U.S. policies on Palestinians, so they were going to visit a Jerusalem hospital that was affected by the Trump administration’s funding cuts for Palestinians. They were going to visit Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists, Palestinian youth and also visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. And Tlaib has a grandmother in the West Bank, and she was going to be visiting her and other relatives there.