Santiago de Chile, June 8 (EFE).- Hundreds of people demonstrated this Saturday in Chile for the protection of children in Palestine and in support of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, an area that has been under siege for eight months. Israel in a massacre that to date totals tens of thousands of civilian victims, mostly women and children.
The attendees gathered at a specific point on La Alameda, Santiago’s main road artery, and traveled a stretch of just over two kilometers without incident, an action that took place a week after the Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, announced in his public account the support of the South American country for the accusation against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Throughout Chile and with greater force in Santiago, thousands of university students have mobilized for their universities to end ties with Israel, which they accused of being a genocidal state.
The first Chilean House of Studies to take action regarding these demands was the University of Santiago (Usach), which last Wednesday decided to suspend the two current agreements it had with the University of Haifa and the Technion-Israel Instititute of Technology
In addition to Usach, other important universities in the country, including the University of Chile and the Pontifical Catholic University, maintain agreements with Israeli universities such as Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv and Hebrew universities in Jerusalem.
With nearly 500,000 people, Chile is home to one of the largest Palestinian communities outside the Arab world and President Boric is a recognized defender of the Palestinian cause, although he has always rejected the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel.
The South American country recognized Palestine as a “free, independent and sovereign” State in 2011, during the first government of the now deceased conservative president Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014).
According to figures from the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, since the last armed conflict began on October 7, the Israeli Army has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. EFE
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