Health Agency Defers Scheme to Avoid Arab Anti-israel Boycott

The executive board of the World Health Organization has referred back to the assembly of WHO for further study procedures permitting the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Committee to be divided into two subcommittees to overcome the refusal of the Arab States to sit with Israel.

The regional director, who had called a meeting of the first sub-committee, in which Israel does not sit, has been instructed by the director general of WHO to postpone the meeting until such time as the second sub-committee could also meet.

The action followed advice by Israel to the agency that the compromise it had attempted to sidestep the boycott of the Jewish State by the Arabs had not worked out and that “it would be better to await more propitious times in order to undertake are-examination of this question.”

Dr. M. Kahany, permanent delegate of Israel to the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations, reminded the board that not one of the 11 member countries having their seat of government in the region had expressed desire to sit on the second subcommittee with Israel. Only one of the three European countries administering territories in the region had agreed to sit on both subcommittees, he said.

Dr. Kahany pointed out that with the fixing of the seat of the first sub-committee is Alexandria, Israel had been deprived of freedom of choice and was virtually excluded from membership on that committee. With Israel as sole member of the second sub-committee, he said, “this would be tantamount to the barely disguised exclusion of a member from its region.”

“We were not and are not opposed to any bona fide effort which may be made to resolve at least provisionally the deadlock created by the obstructive attitude of the Arab countries,” the Israeli representative declared. He said that “efforts made by the regional director in pursuance of the wish expressed by the assembly can hardly warrant much hope that this solution can presently be found.”