New York (Web Desk/Agencies): Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at universities across the United States (US), some of whom have clashed with police in riot gear, dug in on Saturday and vowed to keep their demonstrations going, the foreign media reported.
As Columbia University continues negotiations with those at a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the New York school’s campus, the university’s senate passed a resolution Friday that created a task force to examine the administration’s leadership, which last week called in police in an attempt to clear the protest, resulting in scuffles and more than 100 arrests.
Students representing the Columbia encampment, which inspired the wave of protests across the country, said that they reached an impasse with administrators and intend to continue their protest.
After meetings Thursday and Friday, student negotiators said the university had not met their primary demand for divestment, although there was progress on a push for more transparent financial disclosures. “We will not rest until Columbia divests,” said Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a fourth-year doctoral student.
It is pertinent to mention that police arrested more than 100 people on Columbia's campus last week and removed the tents from the main lawn of the school's Manhattan campus, but the protesters quickly returned and set up tents again, narrowing Columbia's options on dismantling the encampment.
Since then, hundreds of protesters have been arrested at schools from California to Boston as students set up camps similar to the one at Columbia, demanding that their schools divest from companies involved with Israel's military.
On Friday at least 40 protesters were arrested in Denver at the Auraria Campus, an institution shared by the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Community College of Denver, according to a press release from the school.
Civil rights groups have condemned the arrests and urged authorities to respect free speech rights.
Meanwhile, the protests, which have sprouted all around the globe in the near seven-month period since the start of the war on Gaza, continue to spread this week outside the US and spread to schools in Europe and Australia.
According to foreign media quoting, Gaza’s health ministry, at least 34,388 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during more than six months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
