Israel-Palestine live: Israel bombs Unrwa building in Gaza

Good evening Middle East Eye readers,

Israeli forces have killed at least 107 Palestinians and wounded 142 more over the past 24 hours in 13 "massacres", according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

This brings the Palestinian death toll in four months to more than 27,947, with over 67,400 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Israeli forces have killed 340 health personnel and arrested 99 since 7 October, said Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesperson for Gaza’s health ministry, on Friday.

He added that at least 123 ambulances had been destroyed in the same period.

In other developments:

• An “escalation in fighting” in Rafah will mark another “devastating turn in a war” said Unicef executive director Catherine Russell on Friday. 
• A Lebanese-Australian professor of anthropology has been sacked by a leading German research institution after criticising Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
• Moroccan hashish sellers are refusing to sell their wares to Israeli criminals in protest at the war in Gaza, according to Israeli media.
• Next week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to travel to Albania to reinforce the country’s relationship with the United States.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to develop a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
• Legal experts say that videos showing Palestinian detainees from Gaza who were stripped, bound, and blindfolded, which were filmed and posted online by Israeli soldiers, could violate international law.
• A British man stuck in Rafah with his family told Middle East Eye that MI5 proposed assistance for their escape from Gaza, contingent on his agreement to work for the spy agency.
• CIA director Bill Burns is slated to visit Cairo next week for discussions with Egyptian officials regarding initiatives to start talks for a new agreement aimed at securing the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, Axios reported.

CIA director Bill Burns is slated to visit Cairo next week for discussions with Egyptian officials regarding initiatives to start talks for a new agreement aimed at securing the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, Axios reported.

Burns is expected to travel to Egypt next Tuesday. The CIA declined to comment on Burns' travel schedule, Axios said.

US officials told Axios that the White House recognises that securing a hostage deal is essential for achieving a ceasefire in Gaza.

A British man stuck in Rafah with his family told Middle East Eye that MI5 proposed assistance for their escape from Gaza, contingent on his agreement to work for the spy agency.

MI5 tried to recruit British man in Gaza by offering to help family escape

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The man, who declined the offer, now expresses concern for his family's safety, including a one-year-old daughter with a severe health issue and two other young children.

He fears they are at immediate risk due to an anticipated Israeli military action and a deteriorating humanitarian situation that worsens daily.

He said the family, which MEE is not identifying because of the sensitivity of their case, has registered with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which has helped scores of British nationals to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing to Egypt, but has been kept waiting for weeks.

“I thought it would only take a few days or a week at most. I have been waiting for more than two months for them to get me and my family out of this crazy, dangerous war,” he said.

Legal experts say that videos showing Palestinian detainees from Gaza who were stripped, bound, and blindfolded, which were filmed and posted online by Israeli soldiers, could violate international law.

International law says that detainees should not be subjected to unnecessary humiliation or the scrutiny of the public. According to the BBC, there were eight videos openly shared by Israeli soldiers in Gaza since November 2023, showing detainees that were verified.

The Israeli military told the BBC that it terminated the service of one of the reservists that was identified. The military also said that videos like these don't represent its values.

One video that was uploaded on 4 December 2023, displayed a Palestinian detainee, stripped and bleeding, with his hands tied, seated on a chair during an interrogation.

The United Nations said on Friday that while the protection of civilians in Rafah is essential, forced mass displacement must be avoided.

This came in response to Israel's initiation of plans for a forced displacement to facilitate a strategic victory over Hamas in the region.

"We're extremely worried about the fate of civilians in Rafah," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

"What is clear is that people need to be protected, but we also do not want to see any forced displacement - forced mass displacement - of people, which is by definition against their will," Dujarric said.

"We would not support in any way forced displacement, which goes against international law."

On Friday, the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announced plan for increased military action in Rafah is intended to displace Palestinians from their land.

Abbas's office said it holds both the Israeli government and the US administration responsible for the plan's repercussions.

The Palestinian presidency called on the UN Security Council to take notice, "because (Israel) taking this step threatens security and peace in the region and the world. It crosses all red lines", the statement said.

This comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to develop a plan to "evacuate" civilians from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Next week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to travel to Albania to reinforce the country’s relationship with the United States.

In a statement on Friday, the department said Blinken will visit Albania, “a key partner for the stability in the Western Balkans”, and Germany from 14 Feb to 17 Feb.

He will participate in a security conference in Germany, where discussions will focus on supporting Ukraine and advancing peace efforts in the Middle East, according to the State Department.

Moroccan hashish sellers are refusing to sell their wares to Israeli criminals in protest at the war in Gaza, according to Israeli media.

A report in the Mako news site cited a number of Israeli drug dealers complaining about the drop-off in trade.

"The hashish dealers in Morocco are not willing to sell us more hashish either directly or through intermediaries," said one dealer.

"They decided that because of the war they are boycotting us. Since the war we have lost a lot of money. Tens of millions of shekels at least."

The outlet also quoted a Moroccan hashish dealer saying they were refusing to sell to Israelis over the war.

"Why is it possible for Israelis to make a living selling Moroccan hashish when our Palestinian brothers are suffering from hunger and living in inhumane conditions?" said the dealer, based in the Rif Mountains, a hub for hashish growing.

"Go buy it somewhere else. We no longer sell hashish to Israelis - before the war, we did business here with Israelis...merchants came here and made good money, now that's the end of it."

One of the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October was most likely killed in an air strike, the army has concluded.

Yossi Sharabi, a resident of Kibbutz Be'eri who was kidnapped along with his 51-year-old brother Eli by Hamas to Gaza, was pronounced dead last month.

According to an army investigation, Sharabi was held in an apartment in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip along with the hostages Itai Svirsky and Noa Argamani.

It concluded Sharabi was killed after Israeli jets struck a nearby building.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to develop a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

A statement released by the Prime Minister's Office said Netanyahu had also ordered the army and the defence establishment to present plans to defeat the Hamas battalions he said were still operating in the city.

Rafah has become packed with more than one million displaced Palestinians fleeing the Israeli bombardment elsewhere in the besieged enclave.

Israeli forces have killed 340 health personnel and arrested 99 since 7 October, said Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesperson for Gaza’s health ministry, on Friday.

He added that at least 123 ambulances had been destroyed in the same period.

Israel has not even come close to defeating Hamas through its military offensive on the Gaza Strip, US intelligence officials have said.

According to the New York Times, the officials told members of Congress earlier this week that while Israel had managed to degrade Hamas’s fighting capabilities, they were still very far off actually crushing the organisation.

Officials also said that given the nature of Hamas' military wing as a fundamentally "guerilla" force, defeating the group might not even be possible and that simply weakening their combat strength might be a more realistic goal.

Netanyahu claimed last month that Israel had killed two-thirds of Hamas' fighting force, but American officials say privately that their estimates are considerably lower, saying maybe only a third of Hamas's estimated 20,000 to 25,000 fighters had been killed.

“Gaza is now experiencing the worst level of malnutrition for children,” James Elder, spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) told Al Jazeera on Friday

“There is no safe area in Gaza and civilians must be provided with water and shelter. The [Israeli] restrictions imposed make it difficult for us to carry out our work in the Gaza Strip,” added Elder.

A Lebanese-Australian professor of anthropology has been sacked by a leading German research institution after criticising Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

In a statement published on 7 February, the Max Planck Society said they had severed their relationship with "highly acclaimed" academic Ghassan Hage over a set of social media posts that they said were "incompatible" with the society's values.

The statement added that "racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, discrimination, hatred, and agitation have no place in the Max Planck Society".

In response, Hage said he could not accept being characterised as racist over his views.

He said on Thursday that he was informed of his dismissal following a query made to the institute by right-wing newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, alleging that a series of his social media posts criticising Israel were antisemitic.

Read more: German research institute sacks professor over criticism of Israel

A sophisticated, months-long “disinformation campaign” is behind Texas A&M University’s decision on Thursday to close its Doha campus, Qatar Foundation has in a statement on Friday. 

Texas A&M University board voted 7-1 in favor of ending the contract with the foundation, effectively winding down its Doha campus over the next four years.

Following the vote, the university board said it had reevaluated its decades-long presence in Qatar “due to heightened instability in the Middle East".

The foundation slammed the vote in a statement, saying that the university was “influenced by a disinformation campaign aimed at harming the interests” of the foundation.

“It is disturbing that this disinformation has become the determining factor in the decision and that it has been allowed to override the core principles of education and knowledge, with no consideration to the significant positive impact that this partnership has brought for both Qatar and the US,” the statement said.

“It is deeply disappointing that a globally respected academic institution like Texas A&M University has fallen victim to such a campaign and allowed politics to infiltrate its decision-making processes.

“At no point did the board attempt to seek out the truth from Qatar Foundation before making this misguided decision.”

Following the start of Israel's war on Gaza, pro-Israel think tanks in Washington have started to raise concerns over the rights of the Qatari government to defence and nuclear technologies that were being developed at the Doha campus of Texas A&M University. 

The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, which markets itself as “dedicated to the academic study of antisemitism,” sent a letter to US officials in January warning of the “national security threat” posed by the campus and detailing a “disturbing relationship between Qatar and Texas A&M University".