A large contingent of New York police cleared a university building occupied by students after the escalation of pro-Palestinian protests at the elite Columbia University. On Tuesday evening (local time), hundreds of police officers flocked to the campus in northern Manhattan, as a dpa reporter reported on site. Mayor Eric Adams spoke of a total of around 300 arrests at Columbia University and the city’s City College.
In Los Angeles on the west coast, rival protest groups rioted at a camp at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), as US media consistently reported. According to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, there were supporters of a pro-Palestinian group as well as pro-Israel demonstrators. The police arrived after midnight, but the tense situation on campus continued.
Footage shown live by CNN showed, among other things, how participants in a counter-demonstration tried to tear down wooden barricades set up to protect the camp and break into the tent camp. The demonstrators gathered in the camp resisted and also used pepper spray, wrote the Los Angeles Times. Objects, including fireworks, were also thrown. Several people required medical treatment.
Protesters demand consequences for Israel
Demonstrators at universities across the country are criticizing Israel’s actions in the Gaza war and calling for solidarity with the Palestinians. At Columbia University they are demanding that the university’s financial ties with Israel be severed. The university administration rejected this – and requested police support after masked people wearing black and white Palestinian scarves broke windows on Tuesday night, stormed Hamilton Hall and barricaded the entrance to the building with chairs and tables.
During the following police operation, dozens of tents in the so-called solidarity camp on the site were also searched. Footage showed that the demonstrators tried to prevent the police from advancing with human chains, but were pushed aside or torn apart. The tent camp was finally dismantled. Mayor Adams again accused agitators outside the student body of escalating the protests.
Students have also recently occupied university buildings in other US cities, including Portland. At Brown University in Providence (Rhode Island), the demonstrators reached a deal: They dismantled their tent camp – in return the university promised them a vote on the university’s financial relationships with Israel.
Demonstrations in New York escalated
It was the second major operation on the Columbia campus, after the New York police had already moved against the students almost two weeks ago at the request of the university management. They saw their right to freedom of expression limited and criticized the actions of the security forces as disproportionate. As a result, demonstrations and tent camps were set up at dozens of universities in the USA.
Critics accuse the radical part of the protest movement in particular of anti-Semitism and trivializing Hamas – the Islamist organization denies Israel’s right to exist and triggered the Gaza war with an unprecedented massacre on October 7th.
The violent occupation of Hamilton Hall further fueled criticism of the students. Columbia University said it had made it very clear “that the work of the university cannot be endlessly disrupted by protesters violating the rules. If this continues to happen, there will be clear consequences.” Even the US government spoke of the students taking the “absolutely wrong path”: “This is not an example of peaceful protest,” said National Security Council Communications Director John Kirby.
Student suspensions announced
On Monday, the university management announced that it would suspend students if they did not leave the protest camp on the university campus by the afternoon. But the opposite happened: demonstrators broke into Hamilton Hall, which had already been occupied in 1968 during a protest against the Vietnam War.
More than 1,000 demonstrators have been temporarily arrested in the United States since pro-Palestinian student protests began in April. On Tuesday it wasn’t just in New York and California, the police also intervened in other states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Florida.
Hamas and other Islamist groups killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 as hostages in the Gaza Strip during their attack on Israel on October 7 last year. Israel responded with a ground offensive and air strikes on the coastal area. As a result, according to information from the Hamas-controlled health authority – which can hardly be independently verified – around 34,500 people have been killed since the start of the war.