A stiffly-worded resolution approved this week by World Health Organization member states condemned the “wanton” destruction of Gaza’s health facilities and “extreme violence of the illegal Israeli settlers.” The decision called on Israel to ensure humanitarian access to Gaza of medicines, fuel, and other essentials, refrain from further destruction of food production and water supplies,  and release Palestinian civilians arbitrarily detained. 

After hours of debate straddling Tuesday and Wednesday, World Health Organization member states approved two overlapping reports and resolutions on the situation in Israeli-occupied territories, calling on WHO to convene a donor conference on the rehabilitation of Gaza’s health infrastructure before the next World Health Assembly.

The WHO report cites in painstaking detail the degree of destruction seen in Gaza during the two-year Israeli-Hamas war, along with desperate realities facing Palestinians today in the limbo of an uneasy ceasefire and with little progress so far in the reconstruction plans, hyped by the United States-sponsored Board of Peace. As of end 2025, some 75,000 lives had been lost since 7 October 2023, 72,373 of them Palestinian, while Gaza’s housing, health, water and sanitation and food production infrastructure all remain at their knees.  The report and companion resolution also points to the increasingly precarious situation of West Bank Palestinians in accessing health care in the face of tough new military clampdowns, Israeli settlement expansion and mounting settler violence. 

Heated debate over diverging narratives 

Hours of heated debate also reflected the often sharply diverging narratives held by member states around the root problems and solutions. 

On the one hand, there were multiple references to the genocide that had taken place in Gaza, led by regional actors as well as Brazil and South Africa, and a reference by Pakistan to Israel as a “genocidal state.” 

Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic States (OIC), objected to a references in one WHO report to the war’s beginnings on 7 October 2023 when Hamas invaded about a dozen Israeli community, took over 200 Israeli hostages and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.  (A second report cites only Palestinian data for 2025). 

“Israel has reduced Gaza to ruins, strewn with the blood of the innocent, where those who have managed to survive cling to a life of starvation, deprivation and disease. Its catalogue of horrors continues, notwithstanding the purported ceasefire. The victims are the intentional targets of a concerted campaign, a crime against humanity, aimed at erasing the Palestinian people as a group,” declared South Africa.

Palestine’s WHA delegate, Ryad Awaja accused “the occupying power” of describing an “alternate reality … that hides the crimes that are taking place in Gaza today and the occupied Palestine territories, crimes of which the victims are women, the elderly, and children” in remarks that refrained from calling Israel by name.

Claiming that the real number of deaths from the two-year war in Gaza exceeds 200,000, Awaja described it as “the result of an occupation that  has lasted more than 70 years.”

The 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed the UN’s resolution on the partition of Palestine into separate, independent Jewish and Arab states ended with Gaza under Egyptian rule and the West Bank under Jordanian control. 

Debate over October 7 references to Hamas attacks on Israeli communities 

Conversely, other member states expressed concerns that Hamas “terrorism” in the initial 7 October incursion, the holding of Israeli hostages and militarisation of health facilities still needs more scrutiny.  

That was reflected in the vote on the main resolution, approved 89-5, but with nearly 70 countries absent and another 31 countries abstaining, including the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom’s abstention reflects “our continued concern about this country-specific agenda item that uniquely singles out the state of Israel.” At the same time the UK remains “firmly committed to Palestinian self-determination and a Palestinian state,” said the UK delegate. 

Canada, in its remarks, condemned the “October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks” on Israeli communities and called for Hamas’ disarmament to clear the way for new governance arrangements post ceasefire. But it also decried the “catastrophic humanitarian situation that remains in Gaza, despite the ceasefire, and “escalating needs in the West Bank caused by the expansion of Israel settlements and increasing extremist settler violence.” 

The Netherlands, similarly, denounced the “weaponising” of humanitarian aid, a veiled allusion to Israel. But it also expressed reservations about the resolution’s references to “wanton” attacks on health facilities. 

“We condemn indiscriminate attacks. We believe, however, an independent investigation is needed to determine whether all instances of destruction of health facilities can be categorically qualified as ‘wanton’, or that all medical and military facilities, including medical personnel, were, without exception, indiscriminately attacked,” said The Netherlands’ delegate. 

Growing risks of rodents and sanitary degradation 

Beneath the polemics, lurk the very real problems of Gaza’s stagnating, unresolved political and humanitarian situation and a festering West Bank status quo, plagued by a tightening vise of Israeli economic and military restrictions.

In Gaza, Israeli limits on the import of “dual use” items essential for health care, water and sanitation, as well as for demolition clearance and reconstruction is slowing down progress and adding to health risks, member states and civil society groups pointed out at the debate. 

“We call on Israel to facilitate…the delivery of sufficient humanitarian aid, including goods that classifies as dual use,” said the Netherlands.

One growing time bomb noted repeatedly is the proliferation of rodents due to rotting waste and sewage alongside cramped, improvised shelters. Even short-term fixes like imports of extermination products are often not allowed due to their dual use features.  

“The spread of rodents and insects in emergency shelters and tents is driving a worsening health crisis. We have children living in overcrowded and sewage contaminated conditions who are paying the price,” said Malaysia. 

For many months, Gaza’s population has been dealing with the worst infestation of rodents, parasites, and skin diseases that are spreading like wildfire throughout displacement camps, markets, and communities in the coastal enclave. The spread of uncollected trash, raw sewage,… pic.twitter.com/agdKTQhsub

— Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) May 5, 2026

The 365 square kilometre enclave also faces severe challenges in responding to people with ongoing needs from burns and trauma, in a place that is home to the largest number of child amputees per capita, in the world. WHO’s frequent appeals to Israel to resume referral of sick Gaza citizens to hospitals in East Jerusalem and the West Bank have so far gone unanswered. Referrals were halted at the outset of the 2023 war.  

Conundrum of the occupied Syrian Golan

Alongside the Palestinian debate, some member states also pressed WHO to redouble its efforts to report on the “health conditions in the occupied Syrian Golan,” a mountainous region that Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, and unilaterally annexed in 1981 with its international political status remains unresolved. 

According to the WHO report: “Comprehensive disaggregated health data on the Syrian populations in the occupied Syrian Golan remain limited, hindering a full assessment of the availability and coverage of health services. WHO continues to coordinate with relevant authorities and explore possibilities for a field mission by a multidisciplinary team of experts.”

The Golan’s population has been “rendered invisible by Israel’s continued unlawful and illegal occupation,” charged Pakistan.

But the WHO had never requested such a mission, Israel retorted, protesting that health conditions in the Golan Heights are “better than most places represented in these halls.”

The Golan’s 30,000-strong Druze minority community has lived under Israeli civil law since 1981 with access to Israeli health funds, social security and citizenship, and the realities of Druze communities are either poorly understood or misused, said Israel’s Waleed Gadban, political counsellor at the Geneva UN Mission. 

“Some of my family are Druze in the Golan and I am now hearing that they are being deprived of their fundamental right to health care and that is simply not the case. No one in the Golan is being deprived of their fundamental right to health – quite the contrary,” said Gadban, addressing the assembly in Arabic. 

“And if the idea here is to ensure that the Druze be protected, then why isn’t there more concern about the protection of the Druze in Sweida, Syria, where they were massacred only last year in July?” he asked, referring to the attacks of Druze communities by Syrian government-aligned forces that devastated tens of thousands of Druze homes, businesses and places of worship, and led to some 1,700 deaths. 

Two-track reporting on OPT to continue for another year 

Ever since 1967, WHO has issued an annual report on conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan.

In the aftermath of the war in Gaza and consequent humanitarian emergency, a second WHO report specifically focused on Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem was commissioned and approved by WHA member states in 2024, and has since become a standing item on the annual agenda. 

Member states agreed to continue the two-track reporting system for another year in a companion resolution, heeding calls by Palestine and its allies regarding the “essential” nature of the two reports, and rejecting Israel’s appeals to consolidate the work. 

“Israel does not claim that it is above scrutiny,” said Israel’s representative ahead of the vote, adding  “In a time when efficiency should be prioritised, these agenda items drain precious resources while doing nothing for the improvement of health.”

Image Credits: m.saed.gaza/Haaretz, Palestinian Water Authority , X/UNHCR, X/via Israel Ha Yom, WHO, cc/Al Jazeera .