By Staff, Agencies Pro-Palestine students at campuses across the UK have set up encampments demanding that their academic institutions divest from companies involved in the arms trade to “Israel”, which presses ahead with its savage military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Media reports said on Thursday that students in Leeds, Newcastle and Bristol set up tents outside university buildings in protest against the “Israeli” war on the besieged Palestinian territory.

Images shared by organizers showed large groups of students gathering on campuses, alongside tents and banners in prominent areas of the universities.

“Today, students from Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol and Sheffield have joined Warwick – demanding that our universities stop investing in ‘Israel’s’ genocide!” the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a UK-based organization said.

One camp, at Warwick University, has been set up in the piazza for a week.

The students' key demand is that their institutions end investments in companies that supply arms to “Israel”, or are involved in business in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds.

They also want their institutions to end affiliations with “Israeli” universities, which they say are complicit in the plight of the Palestinians.

The groups have called on their universities to divest from “Israel” in response to its ongoing invasion of the besieged Palestinian Strip.

Bristol students said they staged the action “in protest of the university’s complicity in ‘Israel’s’ genocide of Palestinians”, while Apartheid Off Campus Newcastle said its demonstration was to “highlight the institution’s investment strategy and its complicity in the ‘Israeli’ military’s war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank”.

Hala, a PhD student taking part in the protests at the University of Manchester, said: "We will not allow [ourselves to be turned into] accomplices in crimes through the university’s partnerships with companies like BAE Systems, and ‘Israeli’ academic institutions like ‘Tel Aviv’ University and The Hebrew University of ‘Jerusalem’ [Al-Quds], which are built on stolen land.” Demonstrations have been held at New York University, Harvard, MIT and other universities in Michigan, Minnesota and Colombia.

Similar protests have taken place at campuses across the US and in France, with authorities in both countries deploying riot police to violently evict those taking part.

US police have stormed a protest encampment at the University of California amid a similar crackdown on pro-Palestine sit-ins on other campuses in the country.

The police made several arrests as the protesting students defied the warning that they either disperse or face detention.