Protesters preparing signs at Goldsmith University of London
United Nations, May 10 (RHC)-- Student protest rallies continue on campuses across Europe and around the world in solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip as the United Nations is set to vote on Palestinian statehood on Friday.
Dutch police on Thursday dispersed a student protest at the University of Amsterdam in the second consecutive day of demonstration over Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave that has been dragged on for the past seven months.
Police forces in full riot gear attacked protesters and knocked down makeshift barricades of desks, bricks and wooden pallets, arresting at least 32 demonstrators. Videos of the incident show police dragging several students away as hundreds shouted: “Shame on you!”
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte claimed that events at the university had crossed a line, writing on social media that “Demonstrations are allowed. Always. But using violence against the police and causing destruction is never allowed. Stop that!”
At Utrecht University, some 30 miles south, pro-Palestine students occupied a building while in Belgium, dozens of students kept holding a three-day protest at Ghent University.
Further south in Europe, student protesters kept demonstrating and guarded their encampment at several campuses across Spain.
Students at the University of Valencia have managed to keep their tents set up for the last 11 days, calling on Madrid to cut ties with Israel.
Earlier this week, some 200 students at Madrid’s Complutense University set up 80 camps, in which they have been crammed. Similar encampments have also sprung up in Barcelona and the Basque Country.
The Spain’s minister of science, innovation and universities, Diana Morant, praised the move, saying she was “proud” of the students for mobilizing.
Spanish universities should not only be “a place for academic formation, but also critical thinking”, Morant said earlier this week.
For the past several months, Spain, along with Ireland, has been among the EU’s sharpest critics of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. A day earlier, students at the campus of Ireland’s prestigious Trinity College Dublin TCD ended their five-day encampment after university administration announced that it had agreed with their demand of divesting from Israeli companies.
On Friday, the UN will vote on a draft resolution that recognizes Palestine as qualified to become a full UN member at the UN General Assembly.
Separately, staff and alumni from the University of Cambridge signed an open letter to express their “solidarity with Cambridge students as they launch an encampment protesting the university’s ties to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.”
The letter, which has been signed by over 1,700 signatories in the first 48 hours after it was launched, said the students “join an admirable tradition of emancipatory struggle that includes earlier student protests against South African apartheid and the war in Vietnam.”
Over the past few weeks, university campuses across the United States have also become the battleground for demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza, resulting in a series of tense and violent encounters.
The students are calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and demanding schools divest from companies that support the Israeli regime.
