Pro-Palestinian Student Protests Spread Across Europe. Some Are Allowed. Some Are Stopped 

Students wave Palestinian flags as they march towards the Old School buildings to hand letters with their demands to the College Secretary during a protest in support of Palestinian people at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, eastern England on May 7, 2024. (AFP)
Students wave Palestinian flags as they march towards the Old School buildings to hand letters with their demands to the College Secretary during a protest in support of Palestinian people at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, eastern England on May 7, 2024. (AFP)
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Pro-Palestinian Student Protests Spread Across Europe. Some Are Allowed. Some Are Stopped 

Students wave Palestinian flags as they march towards the Old School buildings to hand letters with their demands to the College Secretary during a protest in support of Palestinian people at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, eastern England on May 7, 2024. (AFP)
Students wave Palestinian flags as they march towards the Old School buildings to hand letters with their demands to the College Secretary during a protest in support of Palestinian people at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, eastern England on May 7, 2024. (AFP)

Campus protests by pro-Palestinian activists spread across Europe on Tuesday as some called for a break in academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza, while schools increasingly faced the question under debate in the US: Allow or intervene?

German police broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard at Berlin’s Free University. Protesters occupied a university building in Amsterdam hours after police detained 169 people at a different campus location. Two remained in custody on suspicion of committing public violence.

Elsewhere in Europe, some student camps have been allowed to stay in places like the lawns of Cambridge. In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain.

In Berlin, protesters put up about 20 tents and formed a human chain around them. Most covered their faces with medical masks and draped keffiyeh scarves around their heads, shouting slogans such as “Viva, viva Palestina.”

Organizers said the protests were made up of students from various Berlin universities and other individuals.

Police were seen carrying some people away and using pepper spray as scuffles erupted between officers and protesters. The school's administrators said in a statement they had called the police after protesters had rejected any kind of dialogue and some had attempted to occupy lecture halls.

“An occupation is not acceptable on the FU Berlin campus,” university president Guenter Ziegler said. “We are available for academic dialogue — but not in this way.”

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner hailed the school's decision to call police before things escalated.

In the eastern German city of Leipzig, about 50 pro-Palestinian protesters set up tents at Leipzig University and occupied a lecture hall, the dpa news agency reported. It said the main student association in the state of Saxony, where Leipzig is located, called on the university to break up the occupation over concerns about the safety of Jewish and Israeli students.

In the Netherlands, police broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam, beating some of the protesters and pulling down tents. Police said on the social media platform X that the action was “necessary to restore order” after protests turned violent.

Police used a mechanical digger to push aside barricades and officers with batons and shields moved in. Protesters had formed barricades from wooden pallets and bicycles, national broadcaster NOS reported.

A crowd that swelled to some 3,000 demonstrators, including students and staff, some wearing keffiyeh scarves, gathered near the location of the dismantled camp, chanting slogans including, “Palestine will be free!” and “Cops off campus!”

Jamil Fiorino-Habib, a lecturer at the university’s media studies department, told the gathering that “the only path forward is a total academic boycott of Israel.”

In a statement, the University of Amsterdam said: “We share the anger and bewilderment over the war, and we understand that there are protests over it. We stress that within the university, dialogue about it is the only answer."

In the early evening, a group of protesting students occupied a building on another campus of the school in the historic heart of Amsterdam, an AP video journalist at the scene said.

Students gather for a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP)

In Austria, protesters camped out in about 20 tents in the main courtyard of the University of Vienna for a second day. As police watched, protesters cordoned off the encampment, which is near a memorial for Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust.

The University of Vienna and the main Austrian Union of Students distanced themselves from the protest. The union said “antisemitic groups were among the protest's organizers,” which the protesters denied.

Pro-Palestine protest camps have sprung up at about a dozen universities in Britain, including at Oxford and Cambridge, urging the institutions to fully disclose investments, cut academic ties with Israel and divest from businesses linked to the country.

“Oxbridge’s profits cannot continue to climb at the expense of Palestinian lives, and their reputations must no longer be built on the whitewashing of Israeli crimes,” said a joint statement from protesters at the two universities.

Over 200 Oxford academics signed an open letter supporting the protests.

In Finland, dozens of protesters from the Students for Palestine solidarity group set up camp outside the main building at the University of Helsinki, saying they would stay there until the university, Finland’s largest academic institution, cuts academic ties with Israeli universities.

In Denmark, students set up a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Copenhagen. The university said students can protest but called on them to respect the rules on campus grounds.

In Italy, students at the University of Bologna, one of the world’s oldest universities, set up a tent encampment over the weekend to demand an end to the war in Gaza. Groups of students organized similar and largely peaceful protests in Rome and Naples.

In Spain, dozens of students have spent over a week at a pro-Palestinian encampment on the University of Valencia campus. Similar camps were set up Monday at the University of Barcelona and the University of the Basque Country. A group representing students at Madrid’s public universities announced it would step up protests in the coming days.

In Paris, student groups called for gatherings in solidarity with Palestinians later Tuesday. Students at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, were seen entering the campus to take exams as police stood at entrances.



To Get Their Own Cash, People in Gaza Must Pay Middlemen a 40% Cut

A destroyed branch of the Bank of Palestine in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City is seen Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)
A destroyed branch of the Bank of Palestine in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City is seen Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)
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To Get Their Own Cash, People in Gaza Must Pay Middlemen a 40% Cut

A destroyed branch of the Bank of Palestine in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City is seen Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)
A destroyed branch of the Bank of Palestine in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City is seen Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP)

Cash is the lifeblood of the Gaza Strip’s shattered economy, and like all other necessities in this war-torn territory — food, fuel, medicine — it is in extremely short supply.

With nearly every bank branch and ATM inoperable, people have become reliant on an unrestrained network of powerful cash brokers to get money for daily expenses and commissions on those transactions have soared to about 40%.

"The people are crying blood because of this," said Ayman al-Dahdouh, a school director living in Gaza City. "It’s suffocating us, starving us."

At a time of surging inflation, high unemployment and dwindling savings, the scarcity of cash has magnified the financial squeeze on families — some of whom have begun to sell their possessions to buy essential goods.

The cash that is available has even lost some of its luster. Palestinians use the Israeli currency, the shekel, for most transactions. Yet with Israel no longer resupplying the territory with newly printed bank notes, merchants are increasingly reluctant to accept frayed bills.

Gaza’s punishing cash crunch has several root causes, experts say.

To curtail Hamas’ ability to purchase weapons and pay its fighters, Israel stopped allowing cash to enter Gaza at the start of the war. Around the same time, many wealthy families in Gaza withdrew their money from banks and then fled the territory. And rising fears about Gaza’s financial system prompted foreign businesses selling goods into the territory to demand cash payments.

As Gaza’s money supply dwindled and civilians’ desperation mounted, cash brokers' commissions — around 5% at the start of the war — skyrocketed.

Someone needing cash transfers money electronically to a broker and moments later is handed a fraction of that amount in bills. Many brokers openly advertise their services, while others are more secretive. Some grocers and retailers have also begun exchanging cash for their customers.

"If I need $60, I need to transfer $100," said Mohammed Basheer al-Farra, who lives in southern Gaza after being displaced from Khan Younis. "This is the only way we can buy essentials, like flour and sugar. We lose nearly half of our money just to be able to spend it."

In 2024, inflation in Gaza surged by 230%, according to the World Bank. It dropped slightly during the ceasefire that began in January, only to shoot up again after Israel backed out of the truce in March.

Cash touches every aspect of life in Gaza

About 80% of people in Gaza were unemployed at the end of 2024, according to the World Bank, and the figure is likely higher now. Those with jobs are mostly paid by direct deposits into their bank accounts.

But "when you want to buy vegetables, food, water, medication -- if you want to take transportation, or you need a blanket, or anything — you must use cash," al-Dahdouh said.

Shahid Ajjour’s family has been living off of savings for two years after the pharmacy and another business they owned were ruined by the war.

"We had to sell everything just to get cash," said Ajjour, who sold her gold to buy flour and canned beans. The family of eight spends the equivalent of $12 every two days on flour; before the war, that cost less than $4.

Sugar is very expensive, costing the equivalent of $80-$100 per kilogram (2.2 pounds), multiple people said; before the war, that cost less than $2.

Gasoline is about $25 a liter, or roughly $95 a gallon, when paying the lower, cash price.

Bills are worn and unusable

The bills in Gaza are tattered after 21 months of war.

Money is so fragile, it feels as if it is going to melt in your hands, said Mohammed al-Awini, who lives in a tent camp in southern Gaza.

Small business owners said they were under pressure to ask customers for undamaged cash because their suppliers demand pristine bills from them.

Thaeir Suhwayl, a flour merchant in Deir al-Balah, said his suppliers recently demanded he pay them only with brand new 200-shekel ($60) bank notes, which he said are rare. Most civilians pay him with 20-shekel ($6) notes that are often in poor condition.

On a recent visit to the market, Ajjour transferred the shekel equivalent of around $100 to a cash broker and received around $50 in return. But when she tried to buy some household supplies from a merchant, she was turned away because the bills weren’t in good condition.

"So the worth of your $50 is zero in the end," she said.

This problem has given rise to a new business in Gaza: money repair. It costs between 3 and 10 shekels ($1-$3) to mend old bank notes. But even cash repaired with tape or other means is sometimes rejected.

People are at the mercy of cash brokers

After most of the banks closed in the early days of the war, those with large reserves of cash suddenly had immense power.

"People are at their mercy," said Mahmoud Aqel, who has been displaced from his home in southern Gaza. "No one can stop them."

The war makes it impossible to regulate market prices and exchange rates, said Dalia Alazzeh, an expert in finance and accounting at the University of the West of Scotland. "Nobody can physically monitor what’s happening," Alazzeh said.

A year ago, the Palestine Monetary Authority, the equivalent of a central bank for Gaza and the West Bank, sought to ease the crisis by introducing a digital payment system known as Iburaq. It attracted half a million users, or a quarter of the population, according to the World Bank, but was ultimately undermined by merchants insisting on cash.

Israel sought to ramp up financial pressure on Hamas earlier this year by tightening the distribution of humanitarian aid, which it said was routinely siphoned off by militants and then resold.

Experts said it is unclear if the cash brokers’ activities benefit Hamas, as some Israeli analysts claim.

The war has made it more difficult to determine who is behind all sorts of economic activity in the territory, said Omar Shabaan, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, a Gaza-based think tank.

"It's a dark place now. You don't know who is bringing cigarettes into Gaza," he said, giving just one example. "It's like a mafia."

These same deep-pocketed traders are likely the ones running cash brokerages, and selling basic foodstuffs, he said. "They benefit by imposing these commissions," he said.

Once families run out of cash, they are forced to turn to humanitarian aid.

Al-Farra said that is what prompted him to begin seeking food at an aid distribution center, where it is common for Palestinians to jostle over one other for sacks of flour and boxes of pasta.

"This is the only way I can feed my family," he said.