International Arab and Muslim organizations have met over the past two days or issued statements condemning Israel’s bombing of the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City and called for steps to be taken to halt its war crimes against the Palestinian people. Today in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is chaired by Saudi Arabia, met in an emergency session to discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation in Gaza. Late last night, the OIC’s Secretary General Hissein Brahin Taha issued a statement condemning the bombing of the Baptist hospital, calling it a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity” and demanded that the UN Security Council intervene urgently, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.
At the end of today’s session, the OIC Executive Committee issued a 20-point final communiqué defining specific action to be taken in defense of Gaza’s population, including all “feasible and effective diplomatic, legal and deterrent measures, to stop the occupying power Israel’s crimes against humanity. Yesterday, UN ambassadors from Arab states held a press conference in New York responding to the attack on the hospital, but also to the UN Security Council’s rejection of the resolution presented by Russia on Oct. 16, according to Al Jazeera’s video report of the meeting. The ambassadors angrily rejected Israel’s claim that it didn’t bomb the hospital, and charged that had the Russian resolution been approved, then the hundreds of people who died from the hospital bombing would still be alive.