Spanish universities agree to cut ties with Israel

MADRID – Spanish universities expressed on May 9 their willingness to suspend relations with any Israeli educational institution that does not express a “clear commitment to peace” amid the raging war in Gaza.

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

In a statement, the Board of University Chancellors condemned the violence and supported protests that have occurred recently on Spanish campuses.

They called for an immediate end to Israeli actions in Gaza and pledged to “review relations 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.”

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 ties with Israel,” Sebastian Gonzalez, a 28-year-old law and political science student, told AFP as a protester at Madrid’s Complutense University set up several dozen tents on May 7th.

“If our demands are met, we will disband the camp. Until then, we will continue to resist here and across Spain,” said Mr. 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, 2023, when Hamas militants stormed across the border into southern Israel, killing more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Promising to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a fierce retaliatory offensive that killed around 35,000 people, mostly women and children, in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry.

The violence 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. AFP