“Order must prevail,” says Biden in the face of student mobilization for Gaza

President Joe Biden emerged from his near silence on Thursday on the mobilization against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip which has been agitating American universities for two weeks, to start a callback &agrav; the order.

A few hours earlier, the police militarily dismantled an encampment set up at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) by students and arrested dozens of them.

Six months before the elections, in a polarized United States, the Democratic president engaged on this issue likely to undermine his campaign to affirm that “order must prevail”.

“We are not an authoritarian country that silences people”, nevertheless assured Joe Biden during a short speech.

In in the morning, his opponent and Republican predecessor Donald Trump accused him of inaction in the face of the pro-Palestinian movement. “They are radical left-wing weirdos and we must stop them now because it will last and get worse,” he said upon his arrival at the New York court where he is being tried in an unprecedented trial for a former American president.

Arrests after pro-Palestinian protests © AFP – Corin FAIFE, Aníbal Maíz Cáceres

Since April 17, a wave of mobilization for the Palestinians of Gaza has swept across American campuses, in around forty universities, from the Atlantic coast to California, evoking the demonstrations against the Vietnam War .

The police have intervened several times in recent days to dislodge the protesters. Hundreds of people were arrested.

– People outside the campus –

Students are calling in particular universities to cut ties with patrons or companies linked to Israel and denounce the almost unconditional support of the United States for their ally engaged in a massive campaign in the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil.

Police arrest two protesters during the dismantling of the pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus of the University of California (UCLA), May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles. © AFP – ETIENNE LAURENT

At UCLA, dozens of demonstrators were arrested one by one, handcuffed then taken outside after a tense face-to-face with the police, according to an AFP journalist .

For hours, hundreds of law enforcement officers in riot gear faced the students carrying umbrellas or white helmets and forming a line, clinging to each other's arms.

At the same time, the police methodically dismantled the wooden pallets and plywood panels of a barricade surrounding the camp and took down the tents of the demonstrators, many of whom wore keffiyehs.

The previous night, clashes had broken out on this campus when counter-protesters, many of them masked, attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment and tried to break down a barricade .

Protesters and counter-protesters then clashed with sticks and projectiles.

Graeme Blair, professor of political science at UCLA, regretted Thursday a “so unnecessary” crisis.

Clashes between police and pro-Palestinian students on the campus of the University of California (UCLA), May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles © AFP – Etienne LAURENT

“The university and the authorities had the opportunity to de-escalate. They sent the police very late against the extremists last night (during the attack on the counter-protesters, editor's note) and now they are attacking the students participating in a peaceful demonstration”, he confided to AFP.

UCLA President Gene D. Block had warned before this violence against the presence of people from outside the campus. The incidents “have caused, especially among our Jewish students, deep anxiety and fear,” he said.

– “Divestment” –

Some 300 people were arrested on Wednesday in New York on university sites, according to authorities. During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the police had already chased away pro-Palestinian demonstrators barricaded in the prestigious Columbia University in Manhattan, the epicenter of the student mobilization.

A l At the University of Texas in Dallas (south), police evacuated a protester camp.

Clashes between police and pro-Palestinian students on the campus of the University of California (UCLA), May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles © AFP – Etienne LAURENT

Contrary to other institutions, Brown University (Rhode Island, east) agreed with the demonstrators on the dismantling of their encampment in exchange for a vote on a possible “divestment” from “+companies which make possible and profit from the genocide in Gaza+”.

A mobilization which inspires pro-Palestinian activists around the world, in France, at university McGill in Canada, and Thursday in Switzerland, at the University of Lausanne (UNIL).

The images of riot police intervening on campuses went around the planet and provoked a strong reaction in Israel.

Its president Isaac Herzog denounced a “terrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism” in the world, and particularly in the United States , where “reputable universities” are “contaminated by hatred”.

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