Riot police were drafted in to remove several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators from Amsterdam university offices at Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam on Monday.
Staff and students united in the action group Amsterdam Encampment were demanding that the university sever ties with Israeli universities.
The demonstrators put up a banner renaming the complex the Sirin Al-Atta house, after a gynecologist working for the United Nations relief and works agency UNRWRA, who was killed at the Al-Bureij camp in Gaza in 2023.
The university has said the occupation will have “little or no impact on students” because the building is mainly used as an office. The university has also said it respects and facilitates the right to demonstrate but draws the line at occupation of its buildings.
The university stopped its collaboration with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem recently, but is still involved with other Israeli universities.
There was also a demonstration at the Radboud university in Nijmegen.
Meanwhile, the head office of Allianz insurance in the Netherlands was also targetted by protesters on Sunday night who daubed it in red paint, regional broadcaster Rijnmond reported.
The protestors say Allianz is a shareholder of Israel’s main supplier of weapons, Elbit Systems. Police are currently investigating.
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