UK students at elite universities join mushrooming pro-Palestine protests

At 3am last Wednesday, as the rain poured down, pro-Palestine students at Bristol University set up an encampment opposite a study centre on campus.

Eugenia and five other student activists who had met at previous protests put four tents together. But despite the cold, more sprung up over the next few nights.

“It’s now grown to at least 20 tents, with loads of people rotating in and out, usually about 30 [people] at the camp during the day. But it’s sometimes more if we have a specific event on,” Eugenia, an organiser with the Bristol for Palestine group, told Al Jazeera.

“Staff and students stopping by to express support and ask how they can get involved is also so encouraging,” said Eugenia. “The movement to divest and fight for a free Palestine is so much bigger than the university executives like to pretend.”

The encampment has communal supplies, such as food, face masks, COVID-19 tests, and books on Palestinian history. There are also flyers explaining protester rights as well as leaflets on how Bristol is “complicit in the genocide”.

At the heart of their demands, the students are calling for their university to cut ties with companies that are contributing to Israel’s war efforts, including BAE Systems.

The British defence firm partially manufactures F-35 fighter jets that have been used by the Israeli military in Gaza.

“My university has millions of pounds in partnerships with companies that arm Israel. I do not think it is complicated to think that an institution’s complicity in violent settler-colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide is bad,” said Eugenia, who added that they have been in contact with their peers at the University of Warwick in England and those protesting in the United States and Canada.

He is meeting university bosses on Thursday.

“Universities should be places of rigorous debate but also bastions of tolerance and respect for every member of their community,” Sunak said.

Earlier this month, the Union of Jewish Students, which says it represents 9,000 people in the UK and Ireland, said pro-Palestine encampments “create a hostile and toxic atmosphere on campus for Jewish students”.

Thousands of students across Britain have joined the global student-led protests against Israel’s latest and deadliest war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed about 35,000 people in just seven months. The historic Israel-Palestine conflict escalated after Hamas, which governs the Strip, attacked southern Israel. During its assault, 1,139 people were killed and hundreds were taken captive.

Britain has not witnessed the kind of violent scenes on campuses the US has, including heavy police crackdowns and clashes between protesters and counter-protesters.

The British students say their rallies are peaceful and are joined by many Jewish undergraduates and scholars.

On Tuesday, the Jewish Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London said it stood “shoulder to shoulder” with those rallying for Gaza.