Elite UK universities join pro-Palestine student movement, spooking PM
Al Jazeera
Students at several universities including Oxford and Cambridge are camping out and calling for their colleges to divest from companies supporting Israel.
London, England – 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”.
