Police arrested at least a dozen anti-Israel protesters as they cleared a lecture hall and student camp at the University of California, Irvine.
The University issued an emergency alert Wednesday declaring a “violent protest” after “a group of several hundred protesters entered the UC Irvine campus and began surrounding” the Physical Sciences lecture hall.
Officers from ten nearby law enforcement agencies converged on the campus in riot gear, confronted protesters and cleared the encampment.
At least a dozen students were arrested, according to cnnMany of them were secured with zip ties and the agents took them away.
“Police have retaken the conference room,” said UC Irvine spokesman Tom Vasich, “the plaza has been cleared by law enforcement officers.”
Police arrived at the University of California, Irvine, on Wednesday after the school declared a “violent protest” and requested help.
Vasich said there were a “minimal number of arrests” and characterized the protesters as “reluctantly cooperative.”
It took about four hours for the police to expel the protesters from both the conference room and the square that had been the site of the camp.
Shortly before nightfall, officers entered the conference room and engaged in a tense standoff with protesters at the camp.
Police with helmets and batons formed a line against the protesters. They slowly advanced, pushing students back every few minutes, until officers rushed into the crowd and made more arrests.
Most of the protesters then left and police held the otherwise empty and trash-strewn square while some spectators remained on the periphery.
According to CNN, twelve protesters were arrested, many of them secured with zip ties and taken away.
There was already a camp at the university that had been there since April 29.
The university said all classes would be held remotely on Thursday and asked employees not to come to campus.
The demonstration in Irvine, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, is the latest in a series of campus protests across the United States over the war in Gaza.
Activists have called for a ceasefire and protection of civilian lives, while demanding that universities deviate from Israeli interests.
Protesters at UC Irvine had set up an encampment adjacent to the lecture hall on April 29 similar to those at other universities that have led to mass arrests and clashes with police in other parts of the country.
On Wednesday, between 200 and 300 protesters took over the lecture hall at a time when there were no classes, Vasich said.
Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters arrived on campus Wednesday afternoon and took over a lecture hall.
Police responded in riot gear and formed a barricade as an officer over a loudspeaker warned the crowd that they had formed an unlawful assembly and risked arrest if they remained, the Orange County Register reported.
Students chanted slogans, beat drums and raised banners, while lines of police stood nearby.
A banner hanging from the building declared the site ‘Alex Odeh Hall,’ in honor of a Palestinian activist who was killed in an office bombing in 1985 in the nearby city of Santa Ana.
Four adjacent research buildings with potentially hundreds of people inside were locked down, and those inside were ordered to shelter in place.
Since the day the camp began, Chancellor Howard Gillman said the university has been in talks with students but has not been able to reach an agreement to find an “appropriate and non-disruptive” alternative site.
Protesters are calling for a ceasefire and for the university to disassociate itself from Israeli interests.
Students chanted slogans, beat drums and raised banners, with rows of police standing nearby.
Gillman has said that the university cannot selectively decide not to enforce rules against illegal camping and that “the University of California has made clear that it will not divest from Israel.”
“Protesters at the encampment have focused most of their demands on actions that would require the university to violate the academic freedom rights of faculty members, the free speech rights of faculty members and fellow students, and the civil rights of many of our Jewish students,” Gillman said on Monday.
Protests have spread to college campuses across the country over the past month, with classes closed and hundreds of arrests made, starting in Columbia.
