This video grab shows Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Gaza’s main hospital, who was detained by Israeli forces in November, sitting with his family after his release, along with other detainees, at a hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Monday, July 1, 2024. Israel released the director of Gaza’s main hospital on Monday after holding him for seven months without charge or trial over allegations the facility had been used as a Hamas command center. He said he and other detainees were held under harsh conditions and tortured.
| Photo Credit: AP

Israel released the director of Gaza’s main hospital on July 1 after holding him for seven months without charge or trial over allegations the facility had been used as a Hamas command centre. He said he and other detainees were held under harsh conditions and tortured.

The decision to release Mohammed Abu Selmia, apparently taken in order to free up space in overcrowded detention centres, sparked uproar from across the political spectrum, with government ministers and opposition leaders saying he should have remained behind bars.

They reiterated allegations that he had played a role in Hamas’s alleged use of Shifa Hospital, which Israeli forces have raided twice since the start of the nearly nine-month war with Hamas. Abu Selmia and other health officials have repeatedly denied those accusations, and the fact that he was released without charge or trial was likely to raise further questions about them.

Abu Selmia was released back into Gaza along with 54 other Palestinian detainees, many of whom also alleged abuse. The allegations could not be independently confirmed but matched other accounts of Palestinians who have been held in Israeli custody.

“Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars,” Abu Selmia said at a news conference after his release. “There was almost daily torture.” He said guards broke his finger and caused his head to bleed during beatings, in which they used batons and dogs.

He said the medical staff at different facilities where he was held had also taken part in the abuse “in violation of all laws.” He said some detainees had limbs amputated because of poor medical care.

There was no immediate response from the prison service, which has previously denied similar accusations.

Israeli forces raided Shifa Hospital in November, alleging that Hamas had created an elaborate command and control center inside the facility. Abu Selmia and other staff denied the allegations and accused Israel of recklessly endangering thousands of patients and displaced people who were sheltering there.

The military uncovered a tunnel beneath Shifa Hospital leading to a few rooms, as well as other evidence that militants had been present inside the medical center, but the evidence fell short of what it had claimed before the raid.

Abu Selmia was detained on Nov. 22 while escorting a U.N.-led evacuation of patients from the hospital. He said his detention was “politically motivated,” adding that he had been brought to court at least three times but was never charged or allowed to meet with lawyers.

Israel has since raided several other Gaza hospitals on similar allegations, forcing them to shut down or dramatically reduce services even as tens of thousands have been wounded in Israeli strikes or sickened in the harsh conditions of the war. The army raided Shifa a second time earlier this year, causing heavy destruction after saying that militants had regrouped there.

Hospitals can lose their protection under international law if combatants use them for military purposes.

The decision to release Abu Selmia drew harsh condemnations from government ministers and opposition leaders, as the various state organs responsible for detentions scrambled to shift blame.

Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who controls the country’s police and prison service, said the release of Abu Selmia and the others constituted “security negligence” and blamed the Defense Ministry. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said Abu Selmia’s release was another sign of the government’s “lawlessness and dysfunction.”

Gallant’s office released a brief statement saying the incarceration and release of prisoners is the responsibility of the prison service and the Shin Bet internal security agency. The prison service said the decision was made by the Shin Bet and the army, and released a document ordering his release that was signed by an army reserve general.

The Shin Bet said the government had decided — against its advice — to release detainees who were determined to be less of a threat in order to free up space.

“Though the Shifa Hospital Chief passed the risk assessment compared to other detainees — the matter will be internally reviewed,” it said.

Since the start of the war, Israeli forces have detained thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank, crowding military detention facilities and prisons. Many are being held without charge or trial in what is known as administrative detention.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 civilians and took another 250 hostage. The war has killed at least 37,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or fighters.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, with many displaced multiple times. Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of public order have hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid, fueling widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.

A view of the Supreme Court of Israel.
| Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Israel’s Supreme Court on June 25 ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men for military service, a decision that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel continues to wage war in Gaza.

The court ruled that in the absence of a law that distinguishes between Jewish seminary students and other draftees, Israel’s compulsory military service system applies to the ultra-Orthodox like any other citizens.

Under longstanding arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men have been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. These exemptions have long been a source of anger among the secular public, a divide that has widened during the eight-month-old war.

Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Sarea, chants slogans after he delivered a statement on the group’s latest attacks during a rally held to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, in Sanaa, Yemen on May 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A Greek-owned, Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier that came under attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels earlier this week had a cargo of grain bound for Iran, the group’s main benefactor, authorities said on May 30.

The attack on the Laax comes as the Houthis continue their attacks on shipping throughout the Red Sea corridor, part of a campaign they say aims at pressuring Israel and the West over the war in Gaza. However, as shipping through that artery has dropped during the months of attacks, the rebels have struck vessels associated with Iran, as well as Tehran’s economic lifelines of China and Russia.

Initially after the attack, the Laax had listed its destination as Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. On May 30, however, its listed destination instead appeared to be Bandar Khomeini, Iran.

A statement released by French naval forces based in the UAE that patrol the Middle East also identified the vessel’s grain shipment as being bound for Iran. It said that a team from Djibouti had inspected the damage caused by the attack, which it said involved both drones and missiles, and found no remaining dangerous explosives onboard the ship.

Images released by the French navy showed damage both at the waterline of the vessel, as well as on its deck.

May 28’s attack saw five missiles hit the Laax during the hourslong assault, the private security firm LSS-SAPU told The Associated Press. LSS-SAPU, which earlier helped evacuate mariners from the Houthi-attacked Rubymar that later sunk, said there had been no prior warning by radio from the Houthis.

LSS-SAPU had three armed security guards onboard the Laax at the time of the attack. Among the ship’s crew were 13 Filipinos and one Ukrainian, the Philippine Department of Migrant Workers said in a statement.

The Houthis in recent months have stepped up attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, demanding that Israel end the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians there. The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage.

The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, killed three sailors, seized one vessel and sunk another since November, according to the U.S. Maritime Administration.

On Wednesday, another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone apparently crashed in Yemen, with the Houthis claiming they fired a surface-to-air missile at it. The U.S. Air Force didn’t report any aircraft missing, leading to suspicion that the drone may have been piloted by the CIA. As many as three may have been lost this month alone.

Palestinians carry mock large keys during a mass ceremony to commemorate the Nakba Day, Arabic for catastrophe, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, May 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

As Israel keeps up its campaign against Hamas, Arab leaders are mapping out ways to support post-war Gaza, placing one major condition on their involvement: a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

Major obstacles lie ahead in gaining the support of both U.S. President Joe Biden and the Israeli government, which is currently led by hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a staunch opponent of the two-state solution.

Also read: Israel’s Netanyahu rejects UN backing of Palestinian statehood bid

But the Arab quintet of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt have made clear that their financial and political support, which would be crucial to the future of the shattered Gaza Strip, comes at a cost.

“We have coordinated on this closely with the Palestinians. It needs to be truly a pathway to a Palestinian state,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh last month.

“Without a real political pathway… it would be very difficult for Arab countries to discuss how we are going to govern.”

It is not the first time Arab leaders have come together to chart a path towards a two-state solution, the cherished goal that they believe could defuse tensions in West Asia and help usher in a period of prosperity.

But with the Israel-Hamas war hobbling regional economies and spilling over into neighbouring countries, there is both urgency and opportunity.

Last month, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, European and Arab Foreign Ministers met to discuss how to advance the two-state solution.

Gaza will also be top of the agenda when leaders from the 22-member Arab League meet in Bahrain on Thursday.

Two goals

Arab countries are “pressuring the United States to achieve two things: establish a Palestinian state and recognising it in the United Nations”, said an Arab diplomat who is familiar with the talks.

“What is currently hindering these intensive efforts is the continuation of the war and Netanyahu’s intransigent rejection,” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Arab leaders “have been trying to work with the Biden administration to mutually support the so-called day after” plan, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Britain’s Chatham House think tank.

Central to their plan is the reform of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to clear the way for a reunified administration in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The PA has had almost no influence over Gaza since Hamas militants wrestled control of the territory from the Fatah movement of President Mahmud Abbas in 2007.

“,””],
responsive:{
0:{
loop:false,
autoplay:false,
nav: true,
dots:false,
touchDrag:true,
mouseDrag:true,
items:1
}
}
});
});

A tiny contingent of Duke University graduates opposed pro-Israel comedian Jerry Seinfeld speaking at their commencement in North Carolina on May 12, with about 30 of the 7,000 students leaving their seats and chanting “free Palestine” amid a mix of boos and cheers.

Some waved the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag. Mr. Seinfeld, whose namesake sitcom was one of the most popular in U.S. television history, was there to receive an honorary doctorate from the university.

The stand-up comic turned actor, who stars in the new Netflix movie “Unfrosted,” has publicly supported Israel since it invaded Gaza to dismantle Hamas after the organization attacked the country and killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The ensuing war has killed nearly 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The small student protest on May 12 at Duke’s graduation in Durham, North Carolina, was emblematic of campus events across the U.S. after weeks of student protests resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests at 57 colleges and universities.

Students at campuses across the U.S. responded this spring by setting up encampments and calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it. Students and others on campuses whom law enforcement authorities have identified as outside agitators have taken part in the protests from Columbia University in New York City to UCLA.

Police escorted graduates’ families past a few dozen pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to block access to May 12 evening’s commencement for Southern California’s Pomona College.

After demonstrators set up an encampment last week on the campus’ ceremony stage, the small liberal arts school moved the event 48 kilometers from Claremont to the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Tickets were required to attend the event, which the school said would include additional security measures.

In April, police wearing riot gear arrested 19 protesters who had occupied the president’s office at the college with about 1,700 undergraduates.

Demonstrator Anwar Mohmed, a 21-year-old Pomona senior, said the school has repeatedly ignored calls to consider divesting its endowment funds from corporations tied to Israel in the war in Gaza. , “We’ve been time and time again ignored by the institution,” Mr. Mohmed said outside the Shrine on May 12. “So today we have to say, it’s not business as usual.”

At the University of California, Berkeley, on May 11, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waved flags and chanted during commencement and were escorted to the back of the stadium, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There were no major counterprotests, but some attendees voiced frustration.

“I feel like they’re ruining it for those of us who paid for tickets and came to show our pride for our graduates,” said Annie Ramos, whose daughter is a student. “There’s a time and a place, and this is not it.”

This weekend’s commencement events remained largely peaceful.

At Emerson College in Boston, some students took off their graduation robes and left them on stage. Others emblazoned “free Palestine” on their mortar boards. One woman, staring at a camera broadcasting a livestream to the public, unzipped her robe to show a kaffiyeh, the black and white checkered scarf commonly worn by Palestinians, and flashed a watermelon painted on her hand. Both are symbols of solidarity with those living in the occupied territories.

Others displayed messages for a camera situated on stage, but the livestream quickly shifted to a different view, preventing them from being seen for long. Chants during some of the speeches were difficult to decipher.

Protests at Columbia University, where student uprisings inspired others at campuses across the country, led the school to cancel its main graduation ceremony in favor of smaller gatherings.

The University of Southern California told its valedictorian, who publicly backed Palestinians, that she could not deliver her keynote speech at its graduation ceremony because of security concerns. It later canceled its main graduation ceremony.

At DePaul University in Chicago, graduation is more than a month away. But as the academic year closes, school leaders said they had reached an “impasse” with the school’s pro-Palestinian protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear.

The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, which is calling on the university to divest from economic interests tied to Israel, set up the encampment nearly two weeks ago. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late on May 11.

London:

There is only enough fuel to run health services in the south of Gaza for three more days, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge in the south of Gaza from combat further north in the Palestinian enclave. Israel has threatened a major assault on the southern city of Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters it says are holed up there, and its troops are now battling the Islamist group on Rafah’s outskirts.

The WHO said a delivery of fuel to the area had been denied on Wednesday. It also said that Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah was already no longer functional, one of three hospitals in the city. Some of its equipment has been moved to field hospitals, WHO said.

“WHO has pre-positioned some supplies in warehouses and hospitals, but without more aid flowing into Gaza, we cannot sustain our life-saving support to hospitals,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that WHO would remain in the area to provide health services.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President of Colombia Gustavo Petro gives a speech as part of the 2024 International Workers Day in Bogota, Colombia, on May 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Colombian President Gustavo Petro on May 1 announced his government will break diplomatic relations with Israel effective May 2 in the latest escalation of tensions between the countries over the Israel-Hamas war.

Mr. Petro again described Israel’s siege of Gaza as “genocide.” He previously suspended purchases of weapons from Israel and compared that country’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany.

“Tomorrow, diplomatic relations with the State of Israel will be broken … for having a genocidal President,” Mr. Petro said during an International Workers’ Day march in Colombia’s capital. “If Palestine dies, humanity dies, and we are not going to let it die.”

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz quickly rebuked Mr. Petro’s comments on the platform X.

“History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to side with the most despicable monsters known to mankind who burned babies, murdered children, raped women and kidnapped innocent civilians,” he said.

Weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that sparked the current war in Gaza and killed some 1,200 people, Mr. Petro recalled Colombia’s Ambassador to Israel as he criticized the country’s military offensive.

Historically, Colombia had been one of Israel’s closest partners in Latin America. But relations between the two nations have cooled since Mr. Petro was elected as Colombia’s first leftist President in 2022.

Colombia uses Israeli-built warplanes and machine guns to fight drug cartels and rebel groups, and both countries signed a free trade agreement in 2020.

“Relations between Israel and Colombia always were warm and no antisemitic and hate-filled President will succeed in changing that,” Mr. Katz wrote on April 30. “The state of Israel will continue to defend its citizens without worry and without fear.”

The South American country deepened its military ties with Israel in the late 1980s by purchasing Kfir fighter jets that were used by Colombia’s air force in numerous attacks on remote guerrilla camps that debilitated the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The attacks helped push the group into peace talks that resulted in its disarmament in 2016.

Mr. Petro participated in the march on May 1 in Bogota to promote his proposed health care, pension and labor reforms.

Hamas said on April 27 it was studying Israel’s latest counterproposal for a Gaza ceasefire, a day after media reports said a delegation from mediator Egypt was in Israel trying to jump-start stalled negotiations.

The armed wing of Hamas also released video footage of two men held hostage in Gaza, identified by Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum as Keith Siegel and Omri Miran.

Also read | The war on Gaza and America’s paradoxical role

The signs of fresh truce talks come after the United Nations warned that “famine thresholds in Gaza will be breached within the next six weeks” unless massive food assistance arrives.

Aid groups say Gaza’s already catastrophic humanitarian conditions would be worsened by Israel’s vow to attack Hamas fighters still in Rafah city in southernmost Gaza.

Rafah, on the border with Egypt, is crowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by nearly seven months of war between Israel and the Islamist movement.

“We live in constant terror and fear of repeated displacement and invasion,” Nidaa Safi, 30, who fled Israeli strikes in the north and came to Rafah with her husband and children, told AFP.

The area comes under regular bombardment. Hospital officials said strikes in Rafah and elsewhere killed more than a dozen people overnight.

Among the dead were an entire family, their relative Mohammed Yussef said.

“Nobody left: the father, the mother, a girl and two boys” were killed when their house was targeted, he said.

Daily deaths

Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas’s political arm in Gaza, said it had “received the official Zionist occupation response to the movement’s position, which was delivered to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on April 13”.

In a statement, Hayya said Hamas “will study this proposal” before responding.

The movement has previously insisted on a permanent ceasefire, which Israel rejects.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new Gaza truce deal ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services, reported “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”.

In early April, Hamas had said it was studying a proposal, after talks in Cairo, and Al-Qahera reported progress. Days later Israel and Hamas accused each other of undermining negotiations.

Dozens are dying in Gaza every day, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Summit in Saudi

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,388 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, the health ministry said Saturday.

Israel estimates that 129 hostages seized by militants on October 7 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israeli demonstrators have intensified protests for their government to reach a deal that would free the captives, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war.

The latest hostage video comes just three days after Hamas released another video showing hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin alive.

Both Mr. Siegel and Mr. Miran appeared to speak under duress in the video.

“It’s time to reach a deal that will get us out of here safe and healthy… Keep protesting, so that there will be a deal now,” Miran said in the footage that appeared to have been recorded earlier this week.

U.S. citizen Siegel (64) broke down as he talked of their captivity. “We are in danger here, there are bombs, it is stressful and scary,” he said.

In its report on Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said “the only way to halt famine” is by “massive and consistent food assistance that can be delivered freely and safely”.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said this month that Israel planned to “flood Gaza” with aid, but the OCHA report cited continued “access constraints”.

A special meeting of the World Economic Forum set to begin Sunday in Saudi Arabia will have a strong focus on the war, including the humanitarian situation, organisers said.

A Royal Navy support ship has sailed from Cyprus to house hundreds of US army personnel building a jetty for aid sent by sea, a British defence source said.

Israeli Army spokesman Major Nadav Shoshani told a press briefing the military hoped the pier would be ready by early May.

Cyprus said the aid-laden Jennifer — which had previously returned after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers in Gaza — is now sailing back to the territory.

In Turkey, however, a “Freedom Flotilla” aimed at delivering aid was blocked after being denied use of two ships flying the Guinea-Bissau flag, with organisers blaming Israeli pressure on the West African nation.

Lebanon, West Bank deaths

The Gaza war has led to increased violence between Israel and Iran’s proxies and allies, in particular Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon killed three people on Saturday, including two members of Hezbollah.

Hezbollah said it fired “drones and guided missiles” at a base in northern Israel in response.

Israel’s military said its Iron Dome air defence system intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” and that fire was returned at the source of several anti-tank missiles launched from Lebanon.

Since October 7, more than 250 Hezbollah fighters and dozens of civilians have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 11 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border.

Violence has also soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians near the city of Jenin on Saturday, the army and Palestinian media reported.

On April 17, students at Columbia University escalated their ongoing protests against the war on Gaza by occupying university lawns and creating a ‘Gaza solidarity encampment’. At about the same time, Columbia University’s first woman president Nemat ‘Minouche’ Shafik was attending a Congressional hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce wherein she testified about the University’s action-plan to counter “anti-Semitic” instances on the campus. In a gruelling interrogation, Ms. Shafik was asked whether phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ or ‘long live intifada’ were anti-Semitic. She said that while to her it seemed anti-Semitic, to others it did not.

“Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who want to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of discrimination and harassment has been the central challenge on our campus and numerous others across the country,” Ms. Shafik told the committee. Amid calls for her resignation as president, she assured the committee that the university will continue to be a safe space for Jewish students and that students violating university policy would face consequences. And the very next day, Ms. Shafik asked the New York Police Department to enter the campus and arrest the students who were peacefully protesting in the encampment. More than 100 students were arrested.

Also read: Why are students protesting across U.S. campuses? | Explained 

The Baroness

Ms. Shafik’s career has been a journey of many milestones. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and when she was four years old, her family moved to the U.S. in the mid-1960s. After doing her masters from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and her DPhil from Oxford, she went on to work for the World Bank. At age 36, she became the youngest Vice President of the World Bank. Her work mostly focussed on global development and foreign aid programmes. She also worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Department for International Development of the U.K. In 2014, Ms. Shavik joined the Bank of England as its first Deputy Governor on Markets and Banking, wherein she worked on the contingency planning around the Brexit referendum. She is a member of the U.K. House of Lords and her full title is ‘The Baroness Shafik DBE’.

“I have had jobs that are about doing good, such as fighting poverty or leading educational institutions as well as jobs that are about preventing bad things from happening, like at the IMF and Bank of England,” Ms. Shafik has said of her career. “Both are vital if we are to make and secure progress for humanity.”Columbia wasn’t Ms. Shafik’s first university presidency. In 2017, she took charge as the president of LSE, her alma mater. Even though Columbia seems to be her hardest stint yet, her tenure at LSE was not very smooth either.

It was during her time as president that higher education in the U.K. faced a massive crisis, wherein university staff across the U.K. represented by the University and College Union (UCU) went on successive strikes, from 2018 to 2023, against pension cuts, pay decline, pay inequality, and exploitative and insecure contracts, despite mounting workload. At the time university administrators, including Ms. Shafik, came under intense criticism for not doing more on the national stage for striking faculty. In an interview to The Beaver, the LSE’s student newspaper, UCU President Janet Farrar said university directors are “on the most ridiculous salaries that you’ve ever heard”, quoting Ms. Shafik’s pay in 2019-20, which amounted to a whopping £5,07,000. There are staff members “who are highly casualised, who are using food banks, who are burning out with stress, who are experiencing race, disability, and gender pay gaps for work of equal value,” Ms. Farrar said.

Interestingly, Baroness Shafik in her latest book in 2021, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract, talks about the need for a new social contract for society in order to resolve the increasing anger manifested in polarised politics, culture wars and conflicts over inequality and race. In the book, she calls upon individuals and institutions to rethink how they can better support each other so that society can prosper. As tensions across campuses peak in the U.S., maybe it’s time Ms. Shavik revisits her own position within society and takes her own advice.

French police broke up a pro-Palestinian protest by dozens of university students in Paris, officials said on Thursday, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza sparks a wave of anger across college campuses in the United States.

The police intervened as dozens of students gathered on a central Paris campus of the prestigious Sciences Po university on Wednesday evening, management said.

“After discussions with management, most of them agreed to leave the premises,” university officials said in a statement, saying the protest was adding to “tensions” at the university.

But “a small group of students” refused to leave and “it was decided that the police would evacuate the site,” the statement added.

Sciences Po said it regretted that “numerous attempts” to have the students leave the premises peacefully had led nowhere.

According to the police prefecture, students had set up around 10 tents.

When members of law enforcement arrived, “50 students left on their own, 70 were evacuated calmly from 0:20 am” and the police “left at 1:30 am, with no incidents to report,” the police said.

The protesters demanded that Sciences Po “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus,” according to witnesses.

‘Deeply worrying’

The protest was organised by the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po.

In a statement on Thursday, the group said its activists had been “carried out of the school by more than fifty members of the security forces,” adding that “around a hundred” police officers were “also waiting for them outside”.

Sciences Po management “stubbornly refuses to engage in genuine dialogue,” the group said.

The organisers have called for “a clear condemnation of Israel’s actions by Sciences Po” and a commemorative event “in memory of the innocent people killed by Israel,” among other demands.

Separately, the Student Union of Sciences Po Paris said the decision by university officials to call in the police was “both shocking and deeply worrying” and reflected “an unprecedented authoritarian turn”.

Many top US universities have been rocked by protests in recent weeks, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.

The war in Gaza began with an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.