After hours at the periphery, riot police enter anti-Israel protest camp at UCLA

Hundreds of helmeted police have muscled their way into a central plaza of the University of California at Los Angeles in the early hours of Thursday morning in a move to disperse a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protest camp after violent clashes a night earlier between protesters and counter-protesters.

Starting around sunset on Wednesday, officers in tactical gear began filing onto the UCLA campus adjacent to a complex of tents occupied by throngs of demonstrators, live footage from the scene showed.

Local television station KABC-TV estimated 300 to 500 protesters were hunkered down inside the camp, while around 2,000 more had gathered outside in support.

But the assembled police stood by on the periphery of the tents for hours before finally starting to force their way into the encampment around 3:15 a.m. PDT (1:15 p.m. Israel time) to arrest occupants who refused to leave.

Demonstrators, some carrying makeshift shields and umbrellas, seek to block the officers’ advance by their sheer numbers, while shouting, “push them back” and flashing bright lights in the eyes of the police.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.