Spanish universities agree to cut ties with Israel

Spanish universities on Thursday expressed their willingness to cut ties with any Israeli educational institutions that do not express a “clear commitment to peace” as Israel’s war on Gaza rages.

Student protests have picked up pace across Western Europe in recent weeks. The demonstrators called for an end to the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip and a severance of relations with Israel, taking their cue from demonstrations that have taken place on U.S. campuses.

In a statement, the Governing Council of University Chancellors (CRUE) condemned the violence and supported the protests that recently broke out on Spanish campuses.

They called for an immediate end to Israel’s war on Gaza and pledged to “review relations with Israeli universities and research centers and, if necessary, suspend cooperation with Israeli universities and research centers that have not expressed a firm commitment to peace and respect for international humanitarian law.” have”.

But the diplomatically worded statement did not go far enough to appease students in several protest camps that have sprung up across Spain and have so far been peaceful.

“What we really want is for the government and university rectors to meet our demands and cut off relations with Israel,” said Sebastian Gonzalez, a 28-year-old law and political science student AFP at the Complutense University in Madrid as protesters pitched several dozen tents on Tuesday.

“If our demands are met, we will disband the camp. Until then, we will continue to resist here and throughout Spain,” said Gonzalez, a spokesman for the protesters.

In Spain, the first protest began on April 29 at the University of Valencia in the east, with students setting up around two dozen tents to demand “an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

A similar tent protest followed at the University of Barcelona and this week the camps spread to Madrid, the northern Basque Country, Alicante in the east and the southern Andalusia region.

The Gaza war began on October 7 when Hamas led an attack in southern Israel that killed more than 1,170 people AFP The figures are based on official Israeli figures. Hamas says the attack was a response to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and aggression against the Palestinian people.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israel then launched a devastating air and ground offensive that killed around 35,000 people, mostly women and children.

The war sparked a wave of pro-Palestinian protests that rocked U.S. campuses for weeks at an intensity not seen in decades and then spread to cities in Europe and even Australia.