– Biden condemns violence, arrests top 2,000-
– Blinken presses Hamas to seal cease-fire with Israel
– Hamas sending a delegation to Egypt for further cease-fire talks
Los Angeles: Police removed barricades and began dismantling pro-palentinian demonstrators’ encampment early Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles, after hundreds of protesters defied orders to leave.
The action came after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loudspeakers if people did not disperse. A crowd of more than 1,000 had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside it, in support. Protesters and police scuffled and some people were detained with their hands bound with zip ties.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century.
More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested over the last two weeks at universities across the U.S., including the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia on April 17 to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which followed Hamas launching a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition.
Situation was almost similar in other major campuses also. Yale police arrested four people Wednesday night after around 200 demonstrators had marched to the school president’s home and to the campus police department, Yale officials said.
School officials said in a statement Thursday that protesters ignored repeated warnings that they were violating university policy on occupying parts of campus without permission. Two of those arrested were students, and the others were not, Yale said.
Wednesday night’s protest at Yale came a day after a U.S. House of Representatives committee announced that the presidents of Yale, UCLA and Michigan will appear before the panel on May 23 to answer questions about campus protests.
Meanwhile U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken increased pressure on Hamas on Wednesday to accept the latest proposal for a cease-fire with Israel, saying the “time is now” for an agreement that would free hostages and pause the nearly seven months of war in Gaza.
But a key sticking point appeared to remain — whether the deal would completely end Israel’s offensive as Hamas has demanded.
Even as the U.S., Egypt and Qatar pushed for a cease-fire deal they hoped would avert an assault on Rafah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated on Tuesday that the military would move on the town “with or without a deal” to achieve its goal of destroying the Hamas militant group.
“We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice. We will destroy the Hamas battalions there, we will complete all the objectives of the war, including the return of all our hostages,” he said.
