This Tuesday, May 7, the Dutch Police confronted thousands of students who were marching through the streets of Amsterdam in favor of the Palestinian cause. The clashes caused riots and chaos, a day after the Police dismantled a camp with hundreds of tents at the University of Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands.
Police officers were seen using batons to beat protesters and prevent them from marching in front of the Holocaust Memorial on its way to the city center. Protesters shouted slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “The people united will never be defeated.”
Amsterdam police used a bulldozer to tear down barricades and detained 169 people in sometimes violent clashes, statements and protest videos reviewed by the agency showed. Reuters. The university said in a statement that an initially peaceful student protest that began Monday afternoon had turned hostile, with fireworks being set off and lit and an Israeli flag burned.
Student protests against the war and academic ties with Israel have begun to spread across Europe, but they have been on a much smaller scale than those seen in the United States, where at least 400 pro-Palestinian demonstrations have broken out since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
More than 1,200 people have been arrested in university protests in the United States during the last two weeks, according to a count in the American newspaper Washington Postwhich reviewed news reports, police reports, and official statements from universities.
But the demonstrations in favor of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip and against the Israeli campaign in the enclave, which began on October 7, are also multiplying in universities and educational campuses in European cities. Other demonstrations have taken place in streets and avenues, as happened this Tuesday in Athens, Greece, where more than 300 people with Palestinian flags and banners reading “Hands off Rafah!” They gathered in front of the Parliament building in the capital.
The protests, often staged with camps or the occupation of university spaces, call for a ceasefire, the entry of more humanitarian aid and the end of the Israeli occupation in the territories taken by Israeli settlers in the West Bank under the protection of the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel and with financial and material support from the Israeli government.
GERMANY, FRANCE, SPAIN, SWITZERLAND, UNITED KINGDOM AND IRELAND: PROTESTS TAKEOVER A GOOD PART OF EUROPE
This Tuesday, May 7, the day on which Israel took over the Rafah border crossing and has been attacking that city and its surrounding areas, dozens of demonstrations and protests have taken place at European universities. Rafah has been for months the last refuge for more than 1.4 million Palestinians displaced by the constant and indiscriminate bombings in the north of the enclave: Gaza, Beit Lahia, Jabalia, Nuseirat, Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, practically nothing has been saved from Israeli bombs.
In Berlin, clashes broke out between pro-Palestinian protesters and the police during the eviction of a university. The German Police evicted a pro-Palestinian protest camp that had occupied a courtyard of the Freie Universitaet (Free University) in Berlin.
At least 150 people set up tents on the university campus on Tuesday morning, joining the call of the so-called “Berlin Student Coalition” to occupy German universities. Students from several universities joined the protest, carrying Palestinian flags and banners reading “All eyes on Rafah” and shouting slogans of support for the Palestinians and denouncing Israel and Germany.
In Paris, dozens of students also demonstrated in front of the Sciences Po University in Paris, to denounce Israel’s attack on Rafah and the closure of humanitarian aid crossings, such as Kerem Shalom, on the border with Israel, or the of Rafah, on the border with Egypt. The students demanded that the University cut its ties with entities that work with Israel. According to the protesters, two of their classmates were arrested by the Police on Tuesday for blocking access to the school.
At the Complutense University of Madrid, in Spain, students also set up camps, as also happened this Tuesday at the University of the Basque Country, in Bilbao, in the north of the country. Students raised Palestinian flags and chanted slogans in favor of the Palestinian cause. A phenomenon that was also repeated at the University of Barcelona. While at the University of Valencia, next to the Mediterranean, the pro-Palestinian student demonstration reached its ninth day.
In Switzerland, police began dispersing pro-Palestinian protesters at ETH Zurich university on Tuesday, management said, after student demonstrations spread to campuses in several cities. Students camped at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) last week and protests have since spread to at least three other locations in Zurich, Geneva and Lausanne.
In the United Kingdom, camps of pro-Palestinian protesters have appeared at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, while protests have also occurred in other cities, including Bristol, Leeds and Manchester.
There were also protests at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Authorities at the private university said they would begin to disassociate themselves from entities that operated or had ties to Israeli interests, especially those operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, he said. The New York Times.
