2024-05-03 19:26:27
The movement of pro-Palestinian students, critical of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, is spreading in French universities. This Friday (3) was marked by police operations to evict students who occupied college buildings in Paris and other regions and demonstrations for peace in the Palestinian territory.
During the morning, French police intervened in four occupied universities: the central building of Sciences Po, in Paris – an elite school teaching political science, international relations and finance –, the first faculty to join the movement that began in the United States .
Accompanied by police, 91 students who had spent the night in the Sciences Po building left the place, without incident, but shouting slogans in defense of the population of Gaza and denouncing what they call massacres and even genocide by Israel in the territory Palestinian. Sciences Po has seven campuses spread across France. They are the most mobilized students in the country and ten of them, from different units, are on hunger strike for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The French police also evicted students from the Lyon Institute of Political Sciences and a neighboring university, in the city of Saint-Etienne (southeast). In northern France, police tried but failed to free the Lille School of Journalism, considered one of the best in the country, which joined the movement in the middle of the week. In total, 23 university buildings had classes disrupted or suspended this Friday because of the pro-Palestine movement.
During the afternoon, students from the Sorbonne and several student associations called for a protest in the square in front of the university’s main entrance to denounce the “authoritarianism” of the French government, which has prevented demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinians. Posters also called for peace in Gaza.
On Monday, police entered the Sorbonne and removed tents that students had set up in an internal courtyard, with the intention of spending several days there. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and the Minister of Higher Education have recommended that rectors call the police to restore order in the event of classes being blocked. The official line is that debate is tolerated and normal at colleges, but preventing all students from taking classes will not be accepted. Sorbonne students were outraged that the rector had let the police enter the campus, which, according to them, has only happened twice in the institution’s 150 years of existence.
Jews open to dialogue
The Union of Jewish Students also gathered 200 people on the Panthéon square, near the Sorbonne, for a peaceful debate on the conflict. With yarmulkes on their heads, the young people set up a table under a tree and invited other students and pedestrians to talk about the conflict. Politicians and intellectuals went to the site to support this initiative.
Some anti-Semitic attitudes by some French students have been reported, but they do not represent the majority of pro-Palestinian activists. A few days ago, a Jewish student was expelled from an amphitheater named after Gaza, at Sciences Po. There has already been a meeting between the mobilized students, teachers and the school director and it was agreed that those involved in this case will receive disciplinary sanctions.
Students want to take Israel to international courts
Political science students do not believe they will achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. But they claim that according to what they learn in international law classes, Israel commits war crimes in the Palestinian territories and must answer for this before international bodies.
The demands of students in France are globally the same as those seen on American campuses. Sciences Po students demand that the school management suspend exchange contracts with Israeli universities and institutes and put an end to what they call “massacres in Gaza”, as the Americans do. The big difference is the number of colleges and students involved, which is much higher in the United States than in France.
In conversations with students who are not involved in the protests, some complain of being pressured by their peers to decide which side they are on in the conflict. If they do not defend the Palestinians, they are considered pro-Israel. The polarization is evident. But what most characterizes the movement in France is solidarity with the residents of Gaza, a population described as “victims of Israeli colonial oppression.”
Electoral context
In the United States, college students openly criticize President Joe Biden for continuing to send weapons to Israel. The mobilization is reminiscent of protests against the Vietnam war in the 1960s.
In France, the context is different. President Emmanuel Macron has condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhyahu’s military strategy and called for a ceasefire. But in the posters seen on the street today, the French State was identified as “having blood on its hands”.
The far-left France Insubmissa (LFI) party, poorly positioned in voting intention polls for the European Parliament elections in June, is accused of encouraging students at Sciences Po to take more radical actions. Politicians from that party have gone to colleges to support the movement. Far-left leader Jean-Luc-Mélenchon has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.
As it is a complex and international subject, war particularly affects students of political science and international relations.
Sciences Po is a private and expensive school. In Paris, it has around 5,000 or 6,000 students, half of them foreigners – British, Americans, Brazilians, in short, of various nationalities. The establishment has an exchange agreement with Columbia in New York, one of the most mobilized universities in the United States. Communication between students in New York and Paris was very fast.
With the dimension that the movement gained in the United States, the protests spread to universities in Spain, Switzerland, Mexico and Australia.
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