Back to school essentials: UK students renew calls for universities to cut ties with Israel and to end Gaza genocide

“Apartheid off campus. Genocide off campus. This is our fight.”

Following a tense face-off in the past year with protests, encampments and ongoing battles against their universities, students have been slowly trickling back into a new semester, with their resolve for Palestinian liberation as fervent as ever — particularly as this October marks one year since the beginning of Israel's genocide in Gaza.

The student activists have been protesting their administrations’ genocidal ties with Israel in a war which has contributed to the deaths of 41,252 Palestinians, including nearly 16,500 children.

As an incoming master's student at SOAS this September, it feels surreal to walk past the SOAS Liberated Zone which has worked tirelessly to draw attention to the university’s complicity in war ravaging children and families of limbs, organs, homes and lives.

SOAS students have written a list of demands asking the university to cut ties with companies complicit in Israel’s occupation, "including," they said, "Accenture, Albemarle, Alphabet, Barclays, Microsoft, Newton Investment Management, RELX, and Sony, and commit to not reinvesting," as well as SOAS’s partnership with the University of Haifa.

The university responded, saying they were not sending funds to UofHaifa and were reviewing the companies they align with.

An encampment was also set up on campus which, last month, was evicted after “over 200 pages worth of legal documents with less than a day to respond,” were sent to the campers. 

SOAS not alone in legal struggles 

SOAS isn’t the only establishment to face legal action from their university.

In May, UCL students set up encampments, amping up their efforts in the wake of the killing of alum Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet and academic, who famously penned the poem ‘If I die’.

Last month, UCL won a court order to stop the encampment as the High Court granted a summary possession order, which decided in the university's favour without a full trial.

LSE, University of Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham Queen Mary and more have also taken legal action against students.

One first-year student who was involved in the protests was suspended for her efforts. Qesser, 19, was suspended in May and had her suspension lifted on September 23. 

"Dr Refaat brought home the struggle for us here at UCL on an emotional level far before we ever realised how connected our struggles are," she tells The New Arab.

"Any one of us could have been him. To see that UCL uttered not a word on the murder of one of their students revealed our value to these institutions is simply monetary, which they use to prop up a violent colonial entity. 

“Dr Refaat's martyrdom connects us inextricably to the Palestinian cause and their anti-imperialist struggle, because one day we will all be UCL alumni, and the next day, any one of us can become victim to the killing machine that is imperialism, which the illegal Zionist entity embodies in its entirety, to which our Dr Refaat became victim to,” the student adds. 

Qesser was suspended for four months and said she felt her character was assassinated which has created a hostile environment within her college.

“I feel uncomfortable to be on the same campus as the security guards that brutalised us, and the UCL management who sabotaged our academic future and education."

She continues, "It is truly disappointing that these actors with no moral conscience will still be there. This makes our fight harder. But there is also guilt over the privilege we have to return to normal life, which the students in Gaza don't get to. They don't even get to return to life. So we won't waste this.”

Anwar, a 22-year-old UCL student, echoes Qesser’s sentiment. He says: “The murder of Dr Refaat which went without commemoration by an institution that had a role in the system that killed him was doubly infuriating, knowing that our universities would have no problem with the murder of its students so long as it means it need not reckon with its morally dubious investments. All this created a student body that was angry and grieving.”

Another student disheartened by her school is Hafsa, 21, from the University of Newcastle, which, she says, has usually “been a trailblazer”. However, one particular incident made Hafsa, who facilitated the encampment, think otherwise. 

“The university has been rather suppressive throughout their response. The most striking incident has to be May 29 when over 100 police officers were on campus — including police from the Scottish borders and Durham. This was all in response to 15 students occupying a hall named after Martin Luther King," she explains. 

"There were over 40 counts of police brutality that day alone which also included explicit sexual harassment. An officer had placed his legs between the legs of a student and asked if they liked how that felt.”

The instance made Hafsa feel disillusioned, “I feel wary about going back to university and I think of dropping out at every given chance. I sincerely hope that the university listens to its concerned students so we can all be proud of this institution.”

Teachers stand with students 

It’s not just students, but also faculty who are finding it difficult to come to terms with their employer’s genocidal ties.

One lecturer, who joined a staff collective in support of Palestine at her university where there were encampment closures over the summer, says their response has been abysmal.

Zara* says: “Our objectives were to support the aims of the encampment, and called on the university to divest from Israel - specifically from corporations that are directly involved in arms or surveillance in any capacity. We have participated in protests on campus, we protested outside senate and board of directors’ meetings, and we have written open letters to university management calling on them to commit to human rights and divest.”

None of the demands of staff or students has been met thus far, causing the friction between activists and the university to fester.

“As faculty, I’ve had quite a bit of anxiety about what the new academic year would bring. Our students have decided not to reopen the encampment, but have other forms of actions planned," Zara adds.

"The anxiety I have is rooted in the institution potentially taking punitive measures against employees. At the start of the genocide, we got emails from upper management on nearly a weekly basis warning us that any support for Hamas would have serious consequences."

She continues, "Considering the fact that the Palestinian flag and the keffiyeh as symbols of Palestine have been criminalised in various spaces, to be sent such emails in an environment where Prevent is active just gives rise to feeling increasingly unsafe at work. The tension is always there sadly.” 

One faculty staff, who organises for Palestine solidarity, also explains that students have become ‘consumers’ given their exorbitant tuition fees and therefore their activism can flourish whereas academics can often see their protests curbed.

Ayesha* explains how last November, during Islamophobia Awareness Month, she was called out by her institution for using the word ‘genocide’ on her social media.

She now feels disheartened by the administration.

“From an academic perspective, our hands are tied and we can’t always engage openly in this capacity. Now, I’m just going to work and then coming home. There’s a lack of trust, a lack of enthusiasm, our sense of belonging is non-existent,” she tells The New Arab.

With social media pages popping up among university activists, it’s becoming easier for students to galvanise and the movement shows no signs of slowing, even with the threat of expulsion looming.

As Qesser states, “We will fight and we will take what we are fighting for. Our broken hearts will mend again, stronger.” 

*Names changed to protect identity

Faima Bakar is a freelance journalist writing about race, religion, feminism, and all the ideas she gets when she's on the underground

Follow her on X: @FaimaBakar