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Anti-Israel student protests spread across Europe
German police broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard at Berlin’s Free University. Protesters occupied a university building in Amsterdam hours after police detained 169 people at a different campus location.
Elsewhere in Europe, some student camps have been allowed to stay in places like the lawns of Cambridge. In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain, AP reported.
In the eastern German city of Leipzig, about 50 pro-Palestinian protesters set up tents at Leipzig University and occupied a lecture hall.
In the Netherlands, police broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam, beating some of the protesters and pulling down tents.
In Austria, protesters camped out in about 20 tents in the main courtyard of the University of Vienna for a second day.
Pro-Palestine protest camps have sprung up at about a dozen universities in Britain, including at Oxford and Cambridge, urging the institutions to fully disclose investments, cut academic ties with Israel and divest from businesses linked to the country.
“Oxbridge’s profits cannot continue to climb at the expense of Palestinian lives, and their reputations must no longer be built on the whitewashing of Israeli crimes,” said a joint statement from protesters at the two universities.
In Finland, dozens of protesters from the Students for Palestine solidarity group set up camp outside the main building at the University of Helsinki, saying they would stay there until the university, Finland’s largest academic institution, cuts academic ties with Israeli universities.
In Denmark, students set up a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Copenhagen.
In Italy, students at the University of Bologna, one of the world’s oldest universities, set up a tent encampment over the weekend to demand an end to the war in Gaza.
In Spain, dozens of students have spent over a week at a pro-Palestinian encampment on the University of Valencia campus. Similar camps were set up Monday at the University of Barcelona and the University of the Basque Country.