Hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters detained across US colleges

By Serdar Dincel

ISTANBUL (AA) - Amid ongoing demonstrations at universities across the US in solidarity with Palestine, US police have arrested hundreds of students this week as university campus administrators seek to repress pro-Palestinian encampments and protests.

The demonstrations started on April 17 at Columbia University to protest Israel's offensive in Gaza, in which more than 34,500 Palestinians have been killed and 77,700 injured since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

They quickly spread to other campuses including Yale and Harvard.

The University of California, Los Angeles, emerged Wednesday as another sticking point between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and the police as law enforcement, some wearing riot gear, entered the campus.

The police asked demonstrators to clear out the area to avoid arrest, which they refused.

A Stony Brook University official noted that 29 people "including students, faculty members and others from outside our campus community" have been arrested at around 12:15 am (0515GMT) on Thursday "for violating various legal statutes and university policies," the Axios news website reported.

Multiple students protesting the Gaza war were detained at separate demonstrators at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire State Police said on X.

A police statement early Thursday indicated that 90 people were apprehended at Dartmouth College "for multiple offenses including criminal trespass and resisting arrest," According to Axios.

The New York Police Department stated that officers detained on Wednesday evening several people at Fordham University, a day after they apprehended 282 pro-Palestinian supporters at the Columbia University and the City College of New York.

The police Wednesday took into custody 17 pro-Palestinian supporters at Dallas's University of Texas campus.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison said in an online post that the officers arrested Wednesday 34 people during an anti-Gaza war protest that reportedly wounded four officers. Professors were among those arrested, according to the Washington Post.

The police involving SWAT teams removed a pro-Palestinian encampment at New Orleans' Tulane University and arrested 14 on Wednesday.

College campus protests against ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza have remained under way across the US since students established an encampment at New York’s Columbia University campus in mid-April.

The protests have served as a flashpoint for the wider movement to protest Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion last year which killed some 1,200 people.

Israel has since waged a relentless offensive on the Palestinian enclave killing tens of thousands of Palestinians amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling siege on the seaside enclave, leaving most of its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel is also accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.