By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - New anti-war encampments were established at the University of North Carolina and Arizona State University on Friday as protests calling for their institutions of higher learning to condemn Israel's war on Gaza and divest from Israeli firms persist.
Police attempted to clear the sit-in at Arizona State University, but protesters defiantly remained on a campus lawn after their tents were torn down and carried away by law enforcement. Demonstrators attempted to gather what they could, and locked arms around a canopy that was left standing.
School authorities attempted to clear them from the site by turning on sprinklers, but demonstrators quickly moved to place various objects, including large water bottles, on the sprinklers to block them.
"Water is life," protesters chanted, according to a live feed from the local ABC television station affiliate. "One, two, three, four, occupation no more. Five, six, seven, eight, Israel is an Apartheid state. One, two three, four, we don’t want your dirty war. Five, six, seven, eight. Israel is a terrorist state," they added.
At least some people were taken into custody, but the total number of arrests was not immediately clear.
Thousands of miles (kilometers) away, students established an encampment on the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill campus. Over a dozen tents were set up on the lawn, according to the Daily Tar Heel student-run newspaper.
UNC's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) said in a statement carried by the newspaper that protesters are forming an encampment because administrators had for months stonewalled their request to "discuss the communities' demands for disclosing UNC investments and to demand divestment from companies that benefit from Israeli Apartheid and the ongoing genocide in Gaza."
"In addition to the blatant dismissal of divestment demands, administrators have repressed, intimidated, and threatened SJP members," they said. "In response, UNC SJP remains steadfast in its commitment to Palestinian liberation abroad concurrent with its demands for financial transparency and divestment from genocide at UNC-Chapel Hill."
Last week's decision by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to ask police to arrest demonstrators staging a sit-in on a campus lawn has served as a flashpoint in the wider protest movement. Protests and encampments have since spread to universities nationwide in defiance of arrests and threats from university administrators.
Protests have been reported at a wide array of campuses from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt; University of California, Berkeley; the University of Southern California; the University of Texas at Austin; Yale University; University of Minnesota - Twin Cities; Swarthmore College and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; the University of Rochester in New York; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and Emerson College in Massachusetts; Emory University in Georgia; and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.