TEHRAN- American police have adopted an iron fist policy towards university students who have held peaceful protests on college campuses in solidarity with Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Police carrying riot shields burst into a building at the University of Columbia, Los Angeles, and broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration. 
Protesters had barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall at UCLA in New York early on Tuesday. They occupied the building after the management said it had begun suspending students who had refused to meet a deadline to disperse on Monday.  

Video footage circulating on social media shows individuals aligned with the pro-Zionist, pro-Israel groups attacking the pro-Palestinians who had pitched encampments on the college campus. The attacks came hours after police stormed Hamilton Hall.

Many of the assailants, not affiliated with the university, moved into the campus and clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters near a tent encampment they had pitched. 
Police did not intervene to prevent the vigilantes from beating students who demand their universities stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the regime’s brutal onslaught on Gaza. 

A couple of hours after the scuffles, police entered Colombia’s campus and cleared the encampment. 

New York police arrested nearly 300 people at Columbia University on Tuesday. 

Pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA accused pro-Israelis of carrying out a terror attack.  

"The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror," the UC Divest at UCLA group said in a statement reported by the college paper, Daily Bruin.

They criticized college leaders for not protecting them.

"Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help," it said.

The police crackdown against pro-Palestinians at the university happened on the 56th anniversary of a similar move to quash an occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.

Police also resorted to violence at other American universities to disperse peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters. 

Police in riot gear closed in on an encampment at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff late Tuesday. Police officers arrested about 20 people for what they called trespassing.

University officials had earlier threatened that students would face criminal charges if they did not disperse.

Columbia University has been the epicenter of a heated standoff between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and police for two weeks. 

The protests at Columbia University began on April 18. More than 100 students were arrested after the university called in the police to empty an encampment of demonstrators.

Since then, the pro-Palestinian college campus protests have snowballed across the country. 

US and Israeli officials have accused the university protests of antisemitic.

However, critics say these allegations are meant to silence opposition. 

Organizers of the rallies, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and opposing Israel’s war on Gaza. 

According to an NBC News tally, US police have arrested more than 1,200 pro-Palestinian protesters in the wake of college campus demonstrations over the past two weeks. 

Growing pro-Palestinian protests have raised deep concerns in the administration of President Joe Biden. 

Polls indicate that the majority of young Americans are unhappy with Biden’s handling of the Gaza war as pro-Palestinian demonstrators accuse him of condoning the Israeli genocide. The expansion of college campus protests has added insult to injury.  

Young voters can play a key role in the re-election of Biden in the November presidential vote.  

Hence, the Biden administration is trying to appease rising domestic opposition to his policy toward Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. 

The trip of Secretary of State Antony Blinken to West Asia to help broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is in line with Washington’s efforts to contain pro-Palestinian protests in the country. 

According to NBC News, senior White House officials are increasingly concerned about the expansion of college campus protests and view a potential ceasefire deal between

Israel and Hamas as perhaps the only development that could quell some of the political blowback over Biden’s handling of the conflict.

The US news outlet also says Biden is worried about the spread of pro-Palestinian protests to his and other top administration officials’ events in the following months. 

But it is clear clampdowns will fail to help Washington bring a halt to pro-Palestinian protests. 

The Biden administration is suffering from the consequences of supporting Israel’s war on Gaza. 

Unless the Biden administration exerts pressure on Israel to end its genocidal war on Gaza, Washington will have to pay a heavier price for its failed policy toward the conflict.