NEW YORK: Yazen has slept on Columbia University’s south lawn almost every night for more than a week now, one of several dozen students living at the prestigious school’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
The 23-year-old Palestinian-American has been splitting his days between his medical studies at Columbia’s historic Butler Library, adjacent to the smooth green lawn, and the upkeep of the colorful tents on the school’s main campus, in the heart of New York City.
Since last Monday, dozens of students and alumni have come together to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel is waging war against militant group Hamas.
They are demanding Columbia divest from companies with ties to Israel — and the demonstrations are spreading to other campuses around the United States.
A burgeoning number of protesters now keep vigil daily at Columbia, though numbers ebb and flow from the dozens to the hundreds as students join just for the day, leave to study — or, in Yazen’s case, go home to feed his cat.
“Millions of Palestinians in Gaza are sleeping out in the cold every single night without access to food and shelter,” said Yazen, who did not give his surname.
“We have tents, they don’t have tents,” he said.
He’s determined to stay, even after the university last week called in the police, leading to the arrest and suspension of more than 100 students.
“As a Palestinian, is it my responsibility to be here and show my solidarity with the people in Gaza? Absolutely,” Yazen said.
Universities have become the focus of intense cultural debate in the United States since Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s overwhelming military response, as a humanitarian crisis grips the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
The protest at Columbia has hosted speakers and music performances, Islamic prayers and seder meals for the Jewish holiday of Passover, which began Monday.
But the Middle East conflict is inflammatory in the United States, and as the death toll in Gaza rises — and university authorities up the pressure on the demonstrators to dismantle the encampment — the mood on campus has become uneasy.
This week, in-person classes at Columbia were canceled.
University authorities are caught between condemning anti-Semitism while allowing the protesters to exercise free speech.
But it is a thin line. Tensions reached their peak last week when university authorities called in the police, but it is not just the demonstrators who are feeling the heat.
Melissa Saidak, a Jewish graduate student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, said the protest has also drawn throngs of more aggressive and often violent outsiders to Colombia’s gates.
“A person was yelling at me, screaming at me, calling me a Zionist and a murderer. They were banging a pot or something,” said Saidak, who wears a dog tag in solidarity with Israeli hostages in Gaza and Star of David around her neck.
“It was causing me a lot of physical pain, this was just me trying to get home.”
She thinks Columbia is not doing enough to protect Jewish students — particularly with being transparent and explicit about the harm done to them.
“School has continued to make it a lot worse,” she said.
University president Minouche Shafik had set a deadline of midnight Tuesday to resolve the unrest.
Immediately after that announcement, which came near midnight, hundreds more people flocked to the protest, their numbers spilling over the sidewalks and another lawn.
In a frenzied confusion, demonstrators rushed to clear the camp, carrying half-disassembled tents and bags of supplies away.
But then the deadline was extended for another 48 hours, with the school agreeing not to call in the police or the National Guard.
Student organizers called it an “important victory,” citing fears of “a second Jackson State or Kent State massacre” — referring to two 1970 incidents in which authorities faced off against student protesters, with fatal consequences.
By Wednesday morning the encampment had returned to regular programming.
For now — despite the new looming deadline — it shows no sign of letting up.
D.P., a 22-year-old student who only gave her initials and works security for the encampment, is among those who’ve decided to stay.
“It seems clear to me that it’s what’s necessary for this right now,” she said.
“I can’t stand the thought of not being at camp,” she said. “I think that this whole place is only working because everyone is putting everything they have into it.”
US student protesters dig in as Israel-Hamas war grinds on
https://arab.news/p5b5k
US student protesters dig in as Israel-Hamas war grinds on
- Since last Monday, dozens of students and alumni have come together to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel is waging war against militant group Hamas
- “Millions of Palestinians in Gaza are sleeping out in the cold every single night without access to food and shelter,” said Yazen
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
