During the night between Wednesday and Thursday, some police officers in riot gear entered the Los Angeles campus of the University of California (the campus known as UCLA, i.e. University of California, Los Angeles) to clear out an encampment of demonstrators protesting against Israel and in support of the Palestinian population. There were some clashes: protesters threw objects at the police and chanted pro-Palestine slogans, and the officers subsequently left the university.
They attempted to return shortly after, but by then hundreds of protesters had blocked the entrance to the camp. The agents almost completely destroyed the barricades built by the protesters, made of plywood and other materials. According to an agent from the California Public Safety Agency, at least some have been arrested 132 peoplebut based on the counts of Associated Press they would be at least 200. Always second Associated Pressaround 2,000 people have been arrested in university protests across the country.
Around 6am (3pm in Italy) the police managed to clear out a large part of the camp, but at the moment some groups of students and protesters remain in the area. Some of the arrested people were taken away from the university on buses.
Even the previous night, between Tuesday and Wednesday, there had been violent clashes at UCLA, especially between demonstrators in favor of the Palestinian cause and those in favor of the Israeli cause, which had made police intervention necessary.
– Read also: The violent clashes between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles
Protests have been underway for days in the United States against the war in the Gaza Strip, which began after the attack on Israeli territory by the radical Palestinian group Hamas on October 7 and continued with the siege and land invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed during the Israeli invasion and bombing.
The US protests are probably the largest and most significant since those of 1968 against the war in Vietnam, and are having serious consequences in the academic environment and on politics throughout the United States. Faced with the spread of protests, which have grown in various forms on dozens of campuses, university administrations have adopted very different approaches: some harsher and others more permissive, but very often unsuccessful.
– Read also: American universities don’t know how to handle pro-Palestine demonstrations