Amsterdam: police disperse pro-Gaza student camp

Police dispersed a student encampment on the campus of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) on Tuesday. She arrested 125 protesters who called for the university to cut all ties with Israel over its military offensive in Gaza.

Footage broadcast on public broadcaster NOS showed police charging at protesters with batons and destroying tents around 4 a.m. after they refused to leave the campus.

“The demonstration took on a violent character (…) large stones were removed from the ground,” the police said in a statement.

Following the example of the United States, mobilizations are increasing almost everywhere in Europe. In Germany, haunted by the guilt of the Shoah, student protests are for the moment on a smaller scale, concentrated mainly in Berlin and Cologne (west).

Tuesday morning, in the German capital, between 60 and 80 people set up a protest camp on the campus of the Free University of Berlin, one of the most prestigious in Germany, before being dislodged by the police.

Tents, Palestinian flags and banners reading “the strike is the resistance” were placed on the lawns on site.

“Unacceptable”

“This form of protest is not focused on dialogue,” university president Günter Ziegler said in a statement. He described this occupation of the premises which caused “material damage” as “unacceptable”.

In Amsterdam, students had set up a “Gaza solidarity encampment” on Monday on the Roeterseiland campus of the UvA.

“We are here to demand that this university puts an end to its complicity in the genocide,” one of the organizers told the Dutch news agency ANP.

Violence briefly broke out Monday evening when a small group of counter-protesters brandishing smoke bombs stormed the main demonstration.

Students threw rocks and fireworks at police when they broke up the protest, police said.

They had also blocked some roads leading to the university, prompting police to disperse the protest to allow access to emergency services.

People in detention

On Tuesday morning, police began releasing some of the 125 people arrested, but dozens remained in custody. The UvA said in a statement that it has exchange programs with three Israeli universities.

Its researchers participate in eight European research projects in which Israeli researchers or companies also participate.

“The UvA does not want to contribute to the war in any way, nor does it want to participate in educational exchanges of a military nature,” she stressed.

Leaving American campuses last month – where it was sometimes the subject of repression by the police – the student movement against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the Hamas attack on October 7, spread across the world.

ATS

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