Police Break Up Pro-Palestinian Protest In Amsterdam University, Over 125 Held | On Cam

The protest covered a small island at the university on Monday, demanding to break in academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza. By Tuesday afternoon, police had cleared the Amsterdam protest.

Students held demonstrations in Finland, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Britain. ( Image Source :X/@FOX4 )

Dutch police detained around 125 activists early on Tuesday, as they broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam, sparking protests that have erupted across European campuses similar to those in the United States. Apart from Amsterdam, students also held demonstrations in France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Britain.

Following violent protests, Amsterdam police declared on the social media site X that their actions were "necessary to restore order." No immediate reports of injuries were made.

Inmiddels is het rustig. Een groep van ongeveer van 125 personen is aangehouden. De politie blijft zichtbaar aanwezig in de omgeving van de Roeterseilandcampus.

— Politie Eenheid Amsterdam (@POL_Amsterdam) May 7, 2024

Police are seen using a mechanical digger to knock down barricades and moving in with batons and shields, beating some protesters and tearing down tents in footage from the scene that the national broadcaster NOS broadcast. Bicycles and wooden pallets were used by protesters to create barricades, NOS reported.

Inmiddels is het rustig. Een groep van ongeveer van 125 personen is aangehouden. De politie blijft zichtbaar aanwezig in de omgeving van de Roeterseilandcampus.

— Politie Eenheid Amsterdam (@POL_Amsterdam) May 7, 2024

The protest covered a small island at the university on Monday, demanding to break in academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza. By Tuesday afternoon, police had cleared the Amsterdam protest and had fenced off the area with metal fences. Along the banks of a nearby canal sat students.

The school highlighted in a statement that police removed the demonstration at its Roeterseiland campus overnight Tuesday “due to public order and safety concerns.” “The war between Israel and Hamas is having a major impact on individual students and staff,” it said. “We share the anger and bewilderment over the war, and we understand that there are protests over it. We stress that within the university, dialogue about it is the only answer.”

Pro-Palestinian Protest Camp Across Other Parts Of Europe

On Tuesday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Berlin's Free University's courtyard. After the administrator of the school announced that they were thinking of evacuating the protesters, the demonstrators set up about twenty tents and created a human chain around the encampment.

Numerous demonstrators from the solidarity group Students for Palestine established an encampment outside the University of Helsinki's main building in Finland, stating that they would remain there until the university—which is the country's largest academic institution—severs its academic ties with Israeli universities.

Students at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark established a pro-Palestinian encampment by erecting roughly forty-five tents outside the Faculty of Social Sciences campus.

German news agency dpa confirmed that on Tuesday, pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied a courtyard at the Free University of Berlin.

The protest at FU involved between eighty and one hundred participants. A group called the Student Coalition Berlin shared some images of several tents on Instagram, dpa reported. The administration of the university declared that it had given the order to remove the demonstrators.

Over the weekend in Itlay, students at the historic University of Bologna, among the oldest in the world, established a tent settlement to call for an end to the Gaza conflict, even as Israel geared up for action in Rafah, despite objections from its Western partners. Concurrently, student groups in Rome and Naples orchestrated analogous demonstrations, which remained predominantly tranquil.

Dozens of students have been at a pro-Palestinian camp on the University of Valencia campus in Spain for more than a week. On Monday, similar camps were established at the University of the Basque Country and the University of Barcelona.

In the upcoming days, a group that represents students at Madrid's public universities plans to intensify their anti-war protests. Later on Tuesday, student organisations in Paris demanded demonstrations in support of Palestinians.

Following their peaceful gathering in support of Palestinians, French police on Friday took dozens of students from a building at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, also known as Sciences Po.

Police were stationed at the entrances to the esteemed university on Tuesday when students were observed freely entering the campus to take exams. Among the alumni of the school are President Emmanuel Macron and French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

Last week, across the country, protests took place at some other universities, including in Lille and Lyon. As per the Prime Minister’s Office, police had appealed to remove students from 23 sites on French campuses.