LOS ANGELES – Violent clashes broke out on May 1 around pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as dozens of universities struggle to contain similar protests across the United States.

Police were deployed to the campus after pro-Israeli protesters tried to tear down a pro-Palestinian protest encampment.

Videos posted on social media showed clashes between protesters wielding sticks and poles, firecrackers exploding near groups of demonstrators and people spraying what appeared to be irritant sprays at one another.

Some people were also seen tearing down metal barricades surrounding the encampment.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the violence.

UCLA had been among the most tolerant, as pro-Palestinian protests and encampments grew at universities nationwide.

But in a sharp turn on April 30, the university’s administrators declared that the encampment there was unlawful and threatened to suspend or expel any protesters who were students.

“Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight, and we immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support,” Ms Mary Osako, a vice-chancellor at the university, said in an e-mailed statement.

“The fire department and medical personnel are on the scene,” she added. “We are sickened by this senseless violence, and it must end.”

The Los Angeles Police Department said that there had been multiple acts of violence within the large encampment on the campus.

UCLA is part of the University of California system. It has about 32,000 undergraduate students and is located in the residential neighbourhood of Westwood, just outside of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles.

Last weekend, hundreds of counter-protesters turned up there chanting support for Israel, hoisting signs and waving blue-and-white Israeli flags. They erected a screen that played a video loop of scenes from the Hamas attack on Oct 7.

The two sides taunted one another, pushed, shoved and threw punches, while campus police struggled to contain the skirmishes.

Los Angeles councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, whose district includes UCLA, posted on X: “Everyone has a right to free speech and protest, but the situation on UCLA’s campus is out of control and is no longer safe.”

The Oct 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave have unleashed the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.

As student rallies expressing opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days, police have been called in to quell or clear protests.

About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct 7 attack, but the Israeli retaliatory assault has left nearly 35,000 Palestinians dead, obliterated much of the enclave’s infrastructure and created a humanitarian crisis.

The student protests in the US have also taken on political overtones in the run-up to the presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic rhetoric and harassment.

Arrests at Columbia

At Columbia University in New York, police officers in riot gear made dozens of arrests on the night of April 30 and cleared a building that demonstrators had occupied for nearly a day to protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.

By early morning on May 1, officers were removing banners from the building’s facade. A nearby protest encampment had been cleared, leaving behind square indents on the grass.

Columbia president Minouche Shafik released a letter asking the police to stay on campus until at least May 17 – two days after graduation – “to maintain order and ensure that encampments are not re-established”.

Students standing outside the hall – the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s – jeered at the police with shouts of “Shame! Shame!”

Police were seen loading dozens of people, with their hands bound behind their backs by zip-ties, onto a bus.

“Free, free, free Palestine!” protesters chanted outside the building. Others yelled: “Let the students go!”

In her letter, Dr Shafik said the Hamilton Hall occupiers vandalised university property and were trespassing. The university earlier warned that students taking part in the occupation faced academic expulsion.

A few hours before police entered Columbia, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by “outside agitators” unaffiliated with Columbia.

One student protest leader, Mr Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, disputed assertions that outsiders led the occupation.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators also gathered at City College New York in Harlem on April 30, with the university ordering individuals off the campus and asking police to assist, New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, The New York Times reported. NYTIMES, AFP, REUTERS