A contentious debate at the World Health Organization’s Executive Board exposed the continued deep divisions between Israel and most other member states over the health situation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory, with delegates trading starkly different assessments of humanitarian conditions, access to aid, and the reliability of WHO reporting.

Saudi Arabia’s delegate, speaking on behalf of Eastern Mediterranean member states, described a catastrophic death toll from the two-year Israel-Hamas conflict, saying, “More than 70,000 killed and more than 170,000 injured. Over 18,000 patients are left with life threatening conditions. 4000 of them children, and they await medical evacuation.”

Israel countered that the reporting on aspects of the Gaza situation was outdated as well as distorted, asserting it had approved the exit of thousands of injured Palestinians for medical treatment but there were insufficient places in countries abroad to receive them. Hungary echoed those concerns, with its delegate stating it did “not consider the report comprehensive, as it does not include statistical data beyond September 2025 and does not meaningfully assess the impact of the ceasefire.”  The US-brokered Israeli Hamas ceasefire entered into force in October 2025. A second phase was announced by the United States in January, which is supposed to lead to the demilitarization of the enclave, a new technocratic governance authority, and ultimately physical reconstruction.  

The EB debate culminated in a failed Israeli proposal to consolidate reporting on health conditions in the occupied Palestinian Territories back into one annual WHO report – instead of two – a situation that evolved since the start of the 7 October 2023 war.