Gaza war: Pro-Palestinian protests spread at varsities across the US ‘HAMAS WOULD LAY DOWN ARMS IF A TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS IMPLEMENTED’
US ally Israel started its war in Gaza after the Hamas attack on October 7 that left 1,170 people dead
TEXAS/PARIS: Spiraling pro-Palestinian protests that are rocking universities across the United States spread to more campuses on Wednesday, triggering suggestions from a senior Republican leader that the National Guard could be brought in.
The comments from House Speaker Mike Johnson are likely to evoke strong emotions in a country where the 1970 killing by National Guardsmen of unarmed students protesting the Vietnam war lives on in folk memory.
Demonstrations erupted at the University of Southern California on Wednesday, and in Texas, where a tense stand-off developed between students and police in riot gear, with more than 20 people detained.
It was the latest confrontation between law enforcement and students angry at the mounting death toll in Israel’s war against Hamas.
The movement began at Columbia University in New York where dozens of arrest were made last week after university authorities called in police to quell an occupation that Jewish students said was threatening and anti-Semitic.
Johnson told reporters at Columbia that if the demonstrations were not contained quickly it would be “an appropriate time for the National Guard”.
He said he intended to demand US President Joe Biden “take action”, and warned that the demonstrations “place a target on the backs of Jewish students in the United States”.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden backed free speech. “The president believes that free speech, debate and non-discrimination on college campuses are important,” she told reporters.
US ally Israel launched its war in Gaza after the Hamas attack on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll has topped 34,300, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and are calling on Columbia and other universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
The demonstrators — including a number of Jewish students — have disavowed instances of anti-Semitism.
But pro-Israel supporters, and others worried about campus safety, have pointed to antiSemitic incidents and argued that campuses are encouraging intimidation and hate speech.
Students have also launched protests at schools including Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan and Brown.
Social media images showed an encampment taking shape at Harvard University.
Classes were moved online and other on-campus activities cancelled at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, after protesters barricaded themselves in a campus building. More than 130 people were arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest at New York University on Monday night.
And police at the University of Minnesota reportedly detained nine people at an encampment.
NBC reported that the FBI is coordinating with universities over anti-Semitic threats and possible violence in connection with the ongoing wave of protests.
French police break up university protest
French police broke up a proPalestinian protest by dozens of university students in Paris, officials said on Thursday, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza sparks a wave of anger across college campuses in the United States. Police intervened as dozens of students gathered on a central Paris campus of the prestigious Sciences Po university on Wednesday evening, management said.
“After discussions with management, most of them agreed to leave the premises,” university officials said in a statement to AFP, saying the protest was adding to “tensions” at the university. But “a small group of students” refused to leave and “it was decided that the police would evacuate the site,” the statement added.
Sciences Po said it regretted that “numerous attempts” to have the students leave the premises peacefully had led nowhere.
The protesters demanded that Sciences Po “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus”, according to witnesses.
ISTANBUL: A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview on Wednesday came amid a stalemate in months of ceasefire talks. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction.
But it’s unlikely Israel would consider such a scenario. It has vowed to crush Hamas following the deadly October 7 attacks that triggered the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militants in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange, struck a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.
Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by the rival Fatah faction, to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank.
He said Hamas would accept “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with the international resolutions,” along Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
If that happens, he said, the group’s military wing would dissolve.
“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” he said.