Pro-Palestinian protests roil university campuses from Washington to Amsterdam

Dutch riot police clashed with protesters at the University of Amsterdam on Wednesday, while scores of demonstrators at US colleges were arrested overnight as the student-led protests against Israel's war in Gaza roiled more campuses on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Amsterdam, protesters atop makeshift barriers of desks, bricks and wooden pallets used fire extinguishers to push back police, local television showed.

Reuters video showed officers in riot gear struck protesters on the head with batons and knocked down the barricades, dragging many young students away as hundreds of others shouted "Shame on you!"

The confrontation underscored mounting tensions at European campuses, after weeks of unrest at dozens of US universities as students call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

At George Washington University in Washington, DC, police took down tents, deployed pepper spray and cleared demonstrators from campus and the surrounding streets, a few blocks away from the White House.

At least 33 people were arrested, police said. Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a news conference that authorities had seen "an escalation in the volatility of the protests" in recent days, prompting police and the university to make the decision to remove the encampment.

Smith and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had been scheduled to testify to Congress later on Wednesday about why they had previously declined to clear the encampment, but the hearing was cancelled after the raid.

At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, police arrested more than 130 people and removed an encampment after the school's chancellor, Javier Reyes, said he had summoned police "as a last resort."

In New York, police arrested dozens of demonstrators at the Fashion Institute of Technology, according to video posted on social media.

Some faculty members at The New School in Manhattan set up a new encampment on Wednesday, according to an Instagram post from the school's SJP chapter, days after the city police department cleared a tent city there and arrested more than 40 people.

Divestment demands

Since October 7, Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan authorities, and triggered a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and famine threatening the enclave's 2.5 million residents.

Students in both the US and Europe have been holding mostly peaceful demonstrations calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire and for schools to cut financial ties with companies they say are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians.

In Amsterdam, UvA management said on Monday it had exchange programs with three universities in Israel, which are halted because of security concerns, and was cooperating with Israeli scientists or companies in eight different European research projects.

It said none of those partnerships were in support of military goals; the statement did not mention the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Hundreds of protesters also gathered on Wednesday outside the university of Utrecht, about 45km southeast of Amsterdam.

On Tuesday, police dispersed protests at the Swiss University of Zurich and at the courtyard of the Freie Universitaet Berlin.

Last week, police took similar action at the Sorbonne University in Paris, while on Wednesday the Brussels University said it would file a police complaint against students who were allegedly involved in a violent protest, including an assault on the Jewish students union leader.