Pro-Palestinian demonstrators who have camped on the campus of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) for almost a month confirm that they will leave on Thursday, but assure that their fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people is not over.
The activists announced last week their intention to lift their camp set up in the courtyard of the Pierre-Dansereau Science Complex since May 12 “by June 6 at the latest.”
They said they were satisfied with a resolution adopted by the university’s board of directors concerning the situation in the Palestinian territory and in Israel, the broad outlines of which were approved by the studies committee on Tuesday.
In this resolution, UQAM committed to “ensuring that none of its current and future academic agreements, including those with Israeli universities, come into conflict” with certain principles, including the desire to work by demonstrating a strong commitment to peace and respect for international humanitarian law.
The resolution also asked the UQAM Foundation to ensure that it has no direct investment in funds or companies that profit from armaments.
In a statement released Thursday morning, the activist group “Al-Aqsa Popular University of UQAM” (UPA-UQAM) mentioned that the resolution is “far from satisfactory” because it does not call for a boycott complete list of Israeli universities.
He maintains, however, that the camp “helped make UQAM responsible for its actions by placing it in the public spotlight.”
“Despite the end of the encampment, we will continue the fight, since we cannot be satisfied with performative statements that give a misleading image of a so-called commitment from the university,” argued Sara Hamadi, a student and camper at UPA-UQAM.
The last activists will therefore leave the camp Thursday evening, during a demonstration organized to demand that the Quebec government abolish the Quebec Office in Tel Aviv.