The government is closely watching the protests that continue to spread among Italian universities as a sign of protest against the war in Gaza (ALL NEWS LIVE): on May 13th the Committee for Order and Security will meet with the Minister for Anna Mara Bernini University, the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi and the rectors. “With the president of the Crui Giovanna Iannantuoni – explained Bernini speaking in Naples at the forum organized by the newspaper Tomorrow – we will make sure to understand what the situation is like in the relationship with students in universities. There is protest and there is also a very small fringe that goes beyond certain limits, the thing that worries me is when the protest becomes groups that carry out destructive actions and crimes, break down doors, attack the police.” Meanwhile in Bologna, in the wake of what is happening on US campuses and in other European cities, the Palestinian Youth movement is preparing to launch the “student intifada” with the first real “acampada”: from tomorrow, May 5, tents will be set up protest in the square of the university area, in view of a larger national mobilization scheduled for May 15th, the day of remembrance of the Nakba.
The Young Palestinians of Bologna: “Stop the genocide”
The student mobilization in Bologna is organized in solidarity with the “children of Gaza” and the “students of Birzeit”, the first university in Palestine. They ask for a stop “to the genocide of the Palestinian people”. The young Palestinians explain that their campaign ” fits into this great framework of international mobilization to make it clear that there is also a significant part of our country, students but not only, also teachers and associations, in short, people who have as their priority the end of the military aggression on Gaza , a permanent ceasefire and an end to oppression in Gaza and the occupied territories.”
The campsite in Bologna
The meeting will be tomorrow, in the late afternoon, in Piazza Scaravilli, the heart of the university area of Bologna, in front of the Rectorate, where in the meantime a tarpaulin will be set up for the projection of the transnational assembly of the movement. “We want to say that our world has been turning its back on the rights of the Palestinian people for 75 years,” explain the Young Palestinians. The meeting will see the remote participation of students not only from all over Italy, but also from American universities and Birzeit, the first university in Palestine: “The objective is dialogue, discussion, collecting testimonies”. Then we will spend the first night in the square. Upcoming initiatives will be discussed and announced from time to time.
The other events scheduled
Also tomorrow, the Young Palestinians of Milan will hold an open meeting on Zoom: it will be an opportunity for a connection with the Bologna square. An assembly is scheduled for Friday 10 May at the Sapienza University of Rome (Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences) in which the boycott of Israel will also be discussed. The coordination is national in view of the symbolic date of May 15th: we will remember the Nakba, the forced exodus of around 700 thousand Palestinian Arabs from the territories occupied by Israel in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948.
