On March 22, pro-Palestinian students protested outside the Department of Education in London. Students are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to ties between British universities and Israel.
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On March 22, pro-Palestinian students protested outside the Department of Education in London. Students are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to ties between British universities and Israel.
Photo by Mark Collison/Getty Images
LONDON — A global movement of student occupations of college campuses has coalesced and expanded in recent days, with cameras at U.S. universities capturing dramatic scenes of pro-Palestinian protesters and police.
Attempts by student groups in countries including Britain, France and Mexico to set up what many of them called “solidarity camps” prompted a variety of responses from university authorities and local law enforcement.
Students are pressuring institutional leaders and sometimes even national policymakers to change their stance on Israeli military action, reflecting widespread anger among young people in rich and developing countries.
The protests come against the backdrop of ongoing violence in Gaza, the continued failure of Qatar, Egypt and US-led talks to reach a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and renewed threats from Israeli leaders to launch military action. Rafa.
A common demand among many protesters is for their learning institutions to cut ties with companies doing business with the Israeli state or, in some cases, terminate cooperation agreements with Israeli universities.
The concerns of British students, for example, appear to echo the focus of an increasingly high-profile national campaign to end British arms exports to Israel.Earlier this week, hundreds of activists surrounded a government trade office in London and protested at British aerospace manufacturer BAE Systems sites elsewhere in the UK, leading to multiple arrests.
Days earlier, the United Nations’ highest court in The Hague rejected Nicaragua’s argument that Germany should immediately halt military supplies to Israel.
Protests against armed Israel have been particularly evident at the University of Warwick in central England, where a union of students and staff set up an encampment in the central square of campus last Thursday evening (April 25) to demand that the institution sever ties with Relations with companies supplying military supplies to Israel.
“The University of Warwick is one of the UK universities that has the most cooperation with arms companies,” said Fraser Amos, a student member of the organization representing Palestine at Warwick. “We have spent the last few months campaigning for a university to break these ties – an overwhelming majority of students voted to do so in November and we have since seen 27,000 Palestinian deaths. So we are forced to take this action .
Warwick acknowledged that it maintains academic and research partnerships with companies involved in the production of weapons systems or weapons parts, including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and Moog.
“The university is working to discuss the demands made with protest organizers,” university spokesman Brown Mills told NPR in a statement.
But so far, student campaigns have rarely been successful.
France’s elite Sciences Po has been rocked by protests over the past week, but on Thursday administrators began “emotional” conversations with students in an attempt to calm the situation, according to participants.
Student Ismail El Gataa said shortly after taking part in a dialogue with university authorities: “It’s good to have these debates because the school we come from has always said we have to debate politics, we have to talk. “
On April 29, students camped on the campus of the Sorbonne University in Paris to protest against the Gaza war.
Ameer Alhalbi/Anadolu Photo source: Getty Images
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Ameer Alhalbi/Anadolu Photo source: Getty Images
On April 29, students camped on the campus of the Sorbonne University in Paris to protest against the Gaza war.
Ameer Alhalbi/Anadolu Photo source: Getty Images
Despite specific demands from students, Sciences Po leadership has said it will refuse to cut ties with four Israeli universities or investigate their ties. The school auditorium was occupied overnight and into Friday morning, and student activists responded that their demonstrations would continue — albeit much more peacefully and less confrontationally than in the United States.
“I think it’s a different environment than here in the United States,” Elgata said. “Unfortunately, what I see in the United States is that there is a lot of extremism in certain places.”
But by Friday morning, police forces began massing outside the Sciences Po campus after authorities asked police to help evacuate students — just as they did at the Sorbonne, another prestigious university in Paris.
Another group, Goldsmiths for Palestine, was formed last November at Goldsmiths University in London, when students went on strike to urge university management to issue a statement denouncing the conditions faced by Palestinians and to withdraw funds from a company called Nice Ltd. divestment from a company selling surveillance business.
Postgraduate student Danna Liu Macrae said their move to occupy part of the college’s library this week was directed at Goldsmiths, with students earlier disbanding after university management offered to discuss their concerns Visited previous camps but subsequently became disappointed with the efforts.
“We’ve had multiple meetings with them and they’ve made some promises but no explanations,” Liu McRae said of the latest library occupancy updates. “We need to put renewed pressure on them to hold them accountable and make sure they deliver on their commitments.”
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses have elicited positive reactions from contemporaries and peers elsewhere, but there have been few signs of pro-Israel counter-protests at several U.S. universities.
On Thursday, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), loudspeakers blared across the campus of the country’s largest university, and students set up several tents in front of the university’s administration building to protest against Israeli military action in Gaza.
Alexa Carranza, a Mexican geography student, said she was encouraged by the protests at U.S. universities, especially because she has long believed U.S. students are indifferent to global injustice. “Seeing them wake up inspires me,” she said.
On Thursday, the first day of protests, students demanded that the state of Mexico — not just their own university — should sever diplomatic ties entirely. A small group chanted “Break ties with Israel” and some students spray-painted signs that read “Long live Palestine.”
At the University of Warwick, where police and university authorities largely kept the situation calm, Fraser Amos said the treatment of student protesters in the US was “appalling” and that his group wanted to express its “full response” to a similar encampment at Columbia University in New York. Support”. University of Texas at Austin.
For Samir Ali, an undergraduate at Goldsmiths College in London, students like her are now at the forefront of a global moment of mutual support. “We see ourselves as part of a collective struggle and a collective student movement,” she said.
On April 13, in Mexico City, a woman raised her fists and shouted slogans during a demonstration to protest against Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu, Getty Images
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Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu, Getty Images
On April 13, in Mexico City, a woman raised her fists and shouted slogans during a demonstration to protest against Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu, Getty Images
For Ana Jiménez, it’s an emotional kinship. Growing up in the ravaged Guerrero region of Mexico. She said she felt very strongly for the Palestinian children caught up in the conflict in Gaza.
“We need global solidarity, a world of empathy,” Jimenez said. “When you are young, you have no choice but to be a revolutionary.”
Eleanor Beardsley contributed reporting from Paris. Eyder Peralta contributed reporting from Mexico City.
