The voices of American students resonate loudly on college campuses across the country. to demand the end of war in Gaza. For two weeks, a wave of protests against the support of the Government of USA Israel in its offensive against the Gaza Strip has flooded more than 25 universities and established an unprecedented pro-Palestinian protest movement.
They are already around 1,600 protesters arrested by the police authorities since April 18, as stated Washington Post. The last operation was on the campus of the University of California (UCLA) in The Angelswhere agents this Thursday dismantled a pro-Palestinian camp installed since Tuesday, and have arrested dozens of Protestants.
As stated by the chain cnnthe Police had considered this facility as “illegal assembly”, and the UCLA leadership alerted the protesters of the immediacy of the police intervention. Likewise, he warned that those who were still in the camp then could “be committing a crime” and the students who were demonstrating they risked “being expelled” of the University.
In addition, during the early hours of Wednesday there were several clashes against pro-Israel protesters who appeared hooded and masked in the camp throwing objects at the pro-Palestinians. After this altercation, in the early hours of this Thursday the agents began to break down the barricades to dismantle the camp and transfer the detainees on buses.
Columbia University: epicenter of the protests
The ‘ground zero’ of the protests has been Columbia University, in NY, where students had been demonstrating since April 17. There, the university students took over the emblematic Hamilton Hall, also occupied by students in the protests against the Vietnam War in 1968, and finally the protests culminated on Tuesday night with nearly 300 arrests by the New York Police.
According to the BBC, agents evicted hundreds of students who remained barricaded in educational facilities demanding a boycott of companies and individuals with ties to Israel. The Protestants had blocked access with tables and chairs stacked in the hallways like barricades, but the authorities finally managed to dismantle them.
In this sense, At least 20 detainees have already appeared before a New York court during the night of this Thursday, based on information shared by NBCNews.
Ninety arrested in Dartmouth and 34 in Wisconsin
The protests have also moved to the city of Hanover, New Hampshire, where ninety Dartmouth College students They were arrested this Wednesday by US authorities, accused of having committed “crimes of breaking and entering and resisting arrest”, according to police sources cited by the cnn.
The arrests came after another pro-Palestinian camp was set up on the Dartmouth Green campus, an action that the university security department had not permitted. Before the refusal of some protesters to leavethe police officers were removing them “one by one” from the crowd, detaining them with zip ties.
For its part, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the police dismantled another pro-Palestinian camp this Wednesday morning in which They have arrested at least 34 students. Approximately 30 of them have been summoned to testify after resisting “police action to remove the tents or otherwise interfere with the operation,” as explained by Rector Jennifer L. Mnookin, in a letter cited by the cnn.
Fordham, Texas and Buffalo
Again in New York, the Police have also arrested at least 15 people on Wednesday night after breaking up an encampment on Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus. According to CNN, the protesters had settled in the Lowenstein building of the university to protest against support for Israel in the war with Gaza, and from the New York police department They expect the number of arrests to increase.
For their part, at the University of Buffalo in the same city, around about fifteen protesters after a pro-Palestinian protest carried out during the night of this Wednesday on the north campus of the university, and in parallel 17 others were arrested on the University of Texas Dallas campus for the same reasons.
