Police scuffle with Oxford University students during anti-Israel sit-in; some said arrested

British police arrest about a dozen Oxford University students and scuffle with some during an anti-Israel sit-in at the university premises, according to protesters.

The Oxford Action for Palestine group (OA4P) says university authorities called in police after students began their protest at administration offices, as has been happening on campuses in Britain, the United States and elsewhere amid the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

Thames Valley police say they are aware of the incident and will give information later.

The university has no immediate comment on today’s events, though it has previously said it respects the right to freedom of expression in the form of peaceful protests.

Footage posted on social media by OA4P shows altercations between officers and students sitting in the road blockading a police van which it says was carrying detainees.

Oxford police are continuing their violent assaults and arrests of peaceful protesters, here seen taking away a student on a stretcher. pic.twitter.com/T04edYPfu9

— Oxford Action for Palestine (@OxAct4Pal) May 23, 2024

“Let them go,” the demonstrators chant.

The protesters have been calling for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

“It is evident the administration would rather arrest, silence, and physically assault its own students than confront its enabling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” the group says on X.

Speaking at the scene, Oxford politics student Kendall Gardner says police dragged students out of the way. “We’ve been met with extreme violence and hostility,” she tells Reuters.