Draft decision which submitted to the World Health Organization from 17 member countries and Palestine, which has observer status, demands that Israel fully respect its obligations to protect health service personnel and humanitarian organizations in the Gaza Strip, which has been pounded by the Israeli army for the past two months or more.

The text is expected to be considered tomorrow, Sunday, during a special meeting of the WHO Executive Board, which was convened as an emergency to discuss “the health situation” in the Palestinian occupied territories, “including East Jerusalem.”

It was submitted by Egypt, Algeria, Bolivia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, China, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, while Palestine subscribes to it.

“The Executive Council expresses its deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem” and “military operations in the Gaza Strip,” the preamble states.

Particular concern is expressed about “the siege” in the Palestinian enclave and the “extent of damage” in the “public health sector”.

It also highlights the dangers of “thousands of victims buried in the rubble” to public health, sanitation and refugee overcrowding.

Israel has been imposing a total siege on the Palestinian enclave since October 9, two days after an unprecedented attack by Hamas militants on southern sectors of Israeli territory left some 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, in addition to 240 hostages taken to the Gaza Strip. , according to Israeli authorities.

The Hamas attack is not mentioned in the draft resolution.

In retaliation, Israel launched a massive bombardment of the Gaza Strip and from October 27 he began land operations.

According to the Hamas government, more than 17,000 people, 70% of whom were women, children and teenagers, have been killed in the densely populated Palestinian enclave.

The draft resolution calls on the “occupying power” to “guarantee the respect and protection of all medical and nursing personnel and workers in humanitarian organizations whose activity is exclusively medical, their means of transport and their equipment, as well as the hospitals and other medical facilities”.

Furthermore, it demands that Israel allow the “uninterrupted, coordinated, free, absolutely safe and unimpeded passage of workers in humanitarian organizations”.

It also calls for the international community to raise “adequate funding to meet the immediate and future needs of WHO’s health programs” and “rebuild the Palestinian health system” in “close collaboration” with WHO and other relevant UN agencies.

The WHO Executive Board has 34 member countries, elected for three years, from each of the Organization’s regions.

It plays an important role in implementing the decisions of the World Health Assembly.