Protests by students throughout Europe demanded that universities cut their connections to Israeli institutions because of the latter’s war on Gaza; they included events in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Switzerland.
Protests by students demanding that colleges sever their connections with Israel in response to the Gaza War expanded throughout Europe, with police dispersing gatherings in the Netherlands, Germany, and France.
Inspired by the continuous protests at US campuses, students from a few prestigious European colleges have taken over school buildings and halls, calling for an end to collaborations with Israeli organizations in response to Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza.
Images from the University of Amsterdam appeared on public broadcaster NOS on Tuesday at around 2:00 PM GMT, showing police using baton charges on demonstrators and destroying tents after they refused to leave the campus.
“The demonstration took on a violent nature because later in the evening massive stones were removed from the ground,” police stated in a statement.
Police also broke up a protest at Berlin’s Free University after up to eighty individuals camped out in a campus courtyard early on Tuesday.
The demonstrators hoisted banners while sitting in front of tents; some of them were wearing the keffiyeh scarf, which has long been associated with the Palestinian cause.
The university claimed that after they attempted to take lecture halls and rooms, it contacted the police to put an end to the demonstration.
Social media videos featured police removing a few demonstrators.
The institution reported that while classes were canceled in several buildings for the day, property was also damaged.
According to Berlin police, they made a few arrests for trespassing and inciting hatred.
demos in France and Switzerland
About twenty students had locked themselves in the university’s main hall when police again intervened at the esteemed Sciences Po University in Paris on Tuesday.
Prosecutors in Paris said that when police moved in to give other students time to finish their exams, they made two arrests. According to the institution, everything went according to plan for the tests.
Over the course of the last week, protesters at Sciences Po have called for the university to disclose its relationships with Israeli institutes, and police have interfered multiple times. The institution reports that 13 students are participating in a hunger strike.
Protests on Tuesday extended throughout three colleges in Switzerland.
The first to organize was the University of Lausanne (UNIL), where hundreds of students took over a hall on Thursday night in order to demand an end to collaborations with Israeli academic institutions.
The UNIL retorted that it “considers that there is no reason to cease these relations” in a statement.
The movement expanded on Tuesday to the University of Geneva, where students took over a hall furnished with couches, chairs, and tables at lunchtime, and to the EPFL university in Lausanne, where a number of students commandeered the institution’s hall before leaving in the afternoon.
Just before lunchtime on Tuesday, tens of students demonstrated at the ETH Zurich entry hall, chanting “Free Palestine” and slamming a placard that read “no Tech for Genocide” onto the ground before being removed by police, according to news agency Keystone-ATS.
On Monday night, a tiny group of counter-protesters brandishing flares invaded the main protest in Amsterdam, causing a brief eruption of violence.
In order to allow emergency personnel access, police broke up the protest when demonstrators blocked off some of the university’s roads.
When the cops broke up the demonstration, several students threw rocks and pyrotechnics at them, according to the police, and more than 120 people were taken into custody.
Police started releasing some of the people who had been arrested on Tuesday morning, but many more remained in detention.
University releases links to Israel
According to an AFP count of Israeli official estimates, the Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched an unprecedented offensive on Israel on October 7, sparking the Gaza War and killing around 1,170 people, the majority of them civilians.
At least 34,789 individuals have died in Gaza as a result of Israel’s vicious onslaught, the majority of them were women and children.
Many organizations have also charged Israel for obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s displaced population.
A list of the University of Amsterdam’s partnerships with Israel, which mostly consist of student exchanges and research initiatives involving Israeli professors, has been released.
The college “will under no circumstances contribute to warfare in any way, and we also do not intend to participate in exchanges in the field of military-related education” , according to its website.
SOURCE: TRTWORLD
