The German police have cleared a pro-Palestinian camp in Berlin amid a growing number of such protests across Europe that have been following the model of student tent protests throughout the United States’ universities.
The law enforcement confronted the protesters that had camped outside the German parliament and chancellery in the capital on Friday.
The Berlin camp, named “Besetzung Gegen Besatzung (Occupy Against Occupation),” had begun on April 8.
The participants had been calling for an end to the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and Berlin’s generous arms support for Tel Aviv amid the brutal military onslaught.
More than 34,300 Palestinians have been killed and over 77,200 others wounded in the war that the regime began following a retaliatory operation by the Palestinian territory’s resistance movements.
German authorities issued a prohibition order against the camp, alleging that some of the protesters had committed “violations,” including “the use of unconstitutional symbols and forbidden slogans,” Reuters reported.
"Even if Macron doesn’t want it, we are here!"
— Palestine Highlights (@PalHighlight) April 26, 2024
Students in Paris, France join the pro-Palestine campaign started by students in American universities, pic.twitter.com/2NE7AeS25d
The protesters included Udi Raz, a PhD student at Berlin's Free University, who has been confronted by German authorities for his anti-Zionism activism and organization of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
"Those who are in power here in Germany and accuse us as allegedly anti-Semites, as extremists…[are] nothing less but a government of genocide lovers,” Raz said.
On Wednesday, authorities at Sciences Po, a prestigious Paris university, called in the police to end pro-Palestinian students’ occupation of part of the campus.
The developments come amid underway encampments on campuses from coast to coast across the US, including Columbia University, Yale University, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and California State Polytechnic in Humboldt.
The American students are asking their universities to cut ties with the Israeli regime, while trying to press Washington to drop its ample political, military, and intelligence support for the war.
US officials have come down hard on the protests, bringing in troopers to confront the participants and making hundreds of arrests.