'Universities are complicit in Gaza.That must stop'

Following last month's crackdowns on pro-Palestine student protests in America, a new wave of student campus occupations are springing up across the UK. Robbie Griffiths meets activists at UCL, SOAS and Goldsmiths

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IT'S a sunny Tuesday lunchtime at University College London, and more than 20 newly pitched tents are rustling in the wind near the main building. Security is high, with non-students not permitted behind the heavy black gates, while activists are hesitant to come out in case they can't get back to the "occupation". Passersby stop to read placards with slogans which read "Israel's Starvation of Gaza and Blocking Aid Are War Crimes" and "All Eyes On Rafah". That morning, the Israeli army had launched an attack on the Gazan city.

Stepping outside, third-year undergraduate Junayd said he had been camping for the past five days, braving the weekend rain to show his opposition to the war. He's here to make sure UCL "stands up on the right side of history," he says. That means cutting all ties and investments with companies that the protesters claim are complicit in the Israeli occupation, condemning the bombing of Gaza and investing in Palestinian education.

Some argue that Russell Square is far removed from the war thousands of miles away, but Junayd, who speaks with a crisp British accent, feels a direct connection to it. He says he spoke to an aid worker yesterday who told him that when Gazans heard about the UK student protests "they literally burst into tears... and made a supplication that God blesses us". "I don't care what the random passersby think, if that's what the Gazans say," he tells me. Junayd also believes that living in a tent gives him a small sense of what Gazans in refugee camps are going through - though in very different circumstances.