Like the pro-Palestinian student movements in the United States or France, a group of around sixty students decided Thursday afternoon to gradually squat the Géopolis building at the University of Lausanne. Like their international colleagues, they demand in particular an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and that the institution cease all relations with Israeli universities.
“Israeli universities play an active role in legitimizing the apartheid regime and perpetuating colonization and oppression,” explains a statement released by the group. Furthermore, he asks that Switzerland release its aid to the UN organization for aid to Palestinian refugees (UNWRA).
On the side of the rectorate, faced with a fait accompli, we are trying a consensual approach to these demonstrators who declare themselves as determined as they are pacifist. “We responded positively to their request for dialogue,” said rector Frédéric Herman, who came to negotiate with them, on Thursday.
As it stands, the group is allowed to stay until Monday. “We promised them that there would be no intervention by the police, we are taking a peaceful approach,” he insists, quoted by “Le Temps”. He specifies that the university is a place “where freedom of expression must be protected”.
This protest operation comes as the first in a series of two public courses on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was held on Thursday evening, in another Unil building. These two courses – one given by the holder of the chair of history of Islam and Muslim worlds and the other by that of the chair of history of Jews and Judaism – were contested by associations for their essentially religious vision. While it is “a political conflict and a colonial situation”, notes one of them.
