Pro-Palestinian protests continue to grow at Canadian universities
Tents, banners and flags cropped up at the centre of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus Thursday as students set up an encampment to call on the institution to cut its ties with Israel over the ongoing war in Gaza.
The students said they breached a fence that had been installed around an area on campus known as King’s College Circle around 4 a.m. to establish their protest encampment in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
They said they were joining students at other universities in Canada and the United States in setting up encampments to call on their schools to disclose ties with the Israeli government and divest from Israeli companies.
“We’re planning to stay as long as we need to get our demands. What we’re doing here is basically nothing compared to what the people in Palestine are going through,” Mohammad Yassin, a fourth-year student with relatives in Gaza and a refugee camp in Lebanon, said at the encampment.
“This is not just some childish thing – we’re here just to make our voice heard and we’re standing firm and we want our demands to be heard.”
The encampment at the University of Toronto comes as pro-Palestinian activists have pitched their tents on campuses across the country in recent days, including encampments at McGill University in Montreal, the University of Ottawa and the University of British Columbia. Demonstrations were continuing at all three of those campuses Thursday.
The International Court of Justice is investigating whether Israel has committed acts of genocide in the ongoing war in Gaza, with any ruling expected to take years. Israel has rejected allegations of wrongdoing and accused the court of bias.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza was launched after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 men, women and children hostage. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
The war has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the United Nations.
In Montreal, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian supporters held duelling protests Thursday on either side of a fence leading to McGill University, where police officers formed a line to ensure the two sides stayed apart.
An hour-and-a-half after they began, the protests were heated but peaceful, as each side blasted music, shouted slogans and waved Israeli or Palestinian flags.
On school property, supporters surrounded the pro-Palestinian encampment that has formed since Saturday. While a group of what appeared to be mostly Jewish Palestinian supporters – including several rabbis – formed a line facing the pro-Israel crowd, organizers could be seen encouraging the rest of the supporters to stay further back.
A protest encampment at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver had nearly doubled in size since Monday, with the perimeter of barriers previously taking up half a soccer field now occupying nearly all of it.
Elsewhere in B.C., the University of Victoria said in a statement that the school is closing campus buildings from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. daily in response to an encampment protest there.