The Palestine Liberation Organization and its supporters suffered an overwhelming rebuff at this year’s session of the World Health Assembly, which closed here May 17.
Not only was the PLO’s request for membership in the World Health Organization indefinitely mothballed, but a resolution criticizing Israel for neglecting the health needs of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was scarcely a slight, and was the shortest resolution the conference ever knew.
Moreover, references to “Palestine” as a state and to cooperation with the Palestinian Red Crescent were omitted.
Arab states had offered a resolution that the Red Crescent provide health care to the Palestinians in the territories, but Israel does not permit the Red Crescent to function, on grounds that it is a front for the PLO.
Also deleted from the much-amended draft resolution were references to the need of a “national health plan for Palestinian people,” “foreign occupation” and “illegal Jewish settlements.”
The resolution in its final form was adopted by a vote of 105-2 with five abstentions. The debate lasted less than three hours, the shortest on record.
The only two negative votes were cast by Israel and the United States.
Dr. Antonia Novello, the U.S. surgeon general, who led the American delegation, explained afterward that the United States believes “the text goes beyond WHO’s mandate and serves to politicize the work of the assembly.”
The resolution accused Israel of adopting no consistent health policy toward the Palestinians in the territories and deplored its “inhumanity, especially to the Palestinian people in their current intifada.”
Morris Abram, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency afterward, “The PLO has been foiled again.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
