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Middle East
Students gather in front of the Sorbonne University in support of Palestinians in Gaza, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Paris, France, April 29, 2024.
As police ramp up efforts to dismantle pro-Palestine encampments and demonstrations on US campuses, the student protests are going global.
Students at four universities in Australia have jumped onto what they call a “global wave” of pro-Palestinian activism, vowing to occupy areas of campus with encampments until their schools cut financial ties with Israel.
In the Middle East, student protests are raging from Kuwait to Egypt to Lebanon, where students occupied central locations on campuses on Monday and Tuesday, calling for divestment and an end to the war in Gaza.
Tensions are also rising between students and authorities inFrance, a country with a history of protest and the largest Jewish population in Europe. Students in Paris at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po began occupying parts of their institutions last week. On Saturday, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said his government “would not tolerate the actions of a dangerously acting minority trying to impose its rules and an ideology coming from North America,” while the president of the Île-de-France regionsuspended funding for Sciences Po until “calm and security have been restored.”
Encampments have also popped up at universities in the UK, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Japan, India, and Argentina. For many protesters, fighting for a cease-fire has taken on a larger meaning. They continue to call for divesting from Israel, but they also tie the plight of Palestinians to global structures of oppression and link the war in Gaza toissues like police brutality, the mistreatment of Indigenous people, racism, and climate change.
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: It's still the campus protests for the second week in a row.
This has been a pretty dominant story in US Politics, despite everything going on in the world. Antony Blinken trying to get peace in the Middle East. Donald Trump on trial. These campus protests have dominated headlines and are starting to spill over into the political sphere.
You've seen a number of Republican governors like in Georgia over the weekend, gleefully moving the police in, in order to crack down on a protest at Emory University. The University of North Carolina system has come out strongly against campus protests, and conservatives are rallying to support a bunch of frat boys that decided to defend the American flag against some protesters who wanted to put up a different flag.
Ben Sasse, former senator from Nebraska, is now the president of the University of Florida system, getting kudos online for his strong response. And you're getting protests that are turning increasingly violent at UCLA, at Columbia where a bunch of students occupied administrative building, leading Mayor Eric Adams to send in the police. President Biden this week gave an address to the nation on the student protests, asking for everybody to please calm down, clearly trying to align themselves with who are basically the normies of American politics who don't like this kind of campus protests and violence.
And Donald Trump getting in the game, trying to take advantage of the protests by claiming these are all left wing agitators who are aligned with the Democratic Party. This theme is going to continue throughout the campaign if the protests are sustained, which is, of course, a big question marks with campuses going home for their summer vacation in the next few weeks. So likely the story dies down but will come back to life later in the summer with any protests planned around the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
And of course, any protests that are launched on campuses when they come back in the fall, much closer to the election date. One thing this could be a preview of is organized activism against Donald Trump. Should he win the White House and immediately take actions to crack down on immigration in the United States, or any other hot bit social issue. You now have an organized protest movement that could carry itself into 2025, in the event of a Trump win.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters after the weekly policy lunch in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., October 29, 2019.
In response to roiling campus protests, the House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act on Wednesday. It attracted both bipartisan support and opposition — and now the Senate has a hot latke on its hands.
What does the bill do? It provides an official definition of antisemitic conduct that the Education Department could theoretically use to crack down on universities. If schools tolerate protesters who engage in what the bill defines as antisemitism, they could lose valuable federal research grants.
What’s the definition? It’s based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of antisemitism,” which runs to over 500 words when contextual examples are included. It would condemnn not only threats against Jewish people but also certain criticisms of the state of Israel as antisemitic.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) framed the bill as a way to crack down on perceived antisemitism on campus, as Republicans attempt to use the campus protests to burnish their “law and order” credentials. The bill passed 320 to 91, but it attracted opposition from strange bedfellows.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a practicing Jew and self-described Zionist, said the bill goes too far in stifling free speech: “Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she voted nay because the legislation could punish people who say Jews killed Jesus — itself a deeply antisemitic trope that has been used to target Jewish people for millennia.
What’s next? The bill is now in the hands of the highest-ranking Jewish official in US history, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is under pressure to bring it to the floor speedily. He was cagey on Thursday when talking to reporters about next steps. Ceding the “law and order” position to Republicans would be politically costly, but members including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jon Tester (D-MT) expressed concern over restricting free speech.
Supporters and armed members of the Fatah movement protest against the Palestinian Hamas government during a rally in Jabalya camp September 22, 2006.
With the US still trying, in vain, to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza, China stepped into the fray with some olive branches of its own this week, hosting Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian factions, for reconciliation talks in Beijing.
The backdrop: The secular nationalists of Fatah, who recognize Israel, and the Islamists of Hamas, who don’t, have long vied for control of the Palestinian movement. After Hamas won the 2006 elections, a brief civil war left Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah running the West Bank.
What’s China’s angle? Beijing, already a global economic power, wants to cut a larger figure in diplomacy, cultivating an image as a more honest broker than the US, with closer ties to the so-called “Global South.” Last year, for example, Beijing delivered a détente between bitter enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Not so fast. China is looking to foster intra-Palestinian accords here, not a broader peace deal. And it may be that Beijing is, for now, perfectly happy to see the US tied down by the Gaza war anyway.
But by creating conditions for a smaller resolution within Palestine, Beijing could be eyeing a larger role down the road.
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How will the international community respond to an Israeli invasion of Rafah?
Very, very badly. You see that the Israeli prime minister and War Cabinet continues to say that no matter what happens with the hostages and a potential deal, and everyone's trying to get one done at the last minute, that the intention is still very much to fight on the ground there. I don't think that's a bluff. And especially because it's supported by the entire Israeli political spectrum and the population, they believe that you've got to take out Hamas. And beyond that, there's also the concern about Hezbollah. So I think the international response is going to be very negative. It is certainly going to push back the possibility of any Saudi normalization, and it's going to lead to a lot more demonstrations and hostility against Israel in the United States and in Europe.
How would a Trump presidency be different from his first term?
I think the biggest issue, is that, Trump is going to be focused much more on ending, all of these cases against him, which he sees as completely unjust and that the political enemies, need to be responded to. And that means a top priority of ensuring that the leadership of the Department of Justice, the FBI, probably the IRS, are political appointees and loyalists to him. This was not a priority in the first administration. There's no Bill Barr coming back as attorney general. And I think the potential of that, to both create a new McCarthyism in the United States and also to create a structural advantage for the incumbent party in being able to ensure election outcomes much more strongly than you would in a normal, representative democracy, that is significantly at risk in that environment. That'll change the way we think about rule of law in the United States. That's probably the biggest difference.
Are growing US campus protests a sign of a chaotic election in November?
I wouldn't say that yet. We're still talking about relatively small numbers of students, and after graduations are over, I think the student protests are over. But there's no question this does reflect a significant anger among young people in the country. A lot of the people that are involved in the takeovers of buildings, for example, and the tussling with police, are not the students themselves, but people coming in, political entrepreneurs, if I can call them that, from outside. I am deeply concerned about what happens with the upcoming Democratic convention in Chicago. I think that could be very violent with lots of demonstrations. Certainly I don't see the war in Gaza over any time soon. And as a consequence of that, I think that, this is going to be a big problem and very, very challenging, as we think about the most dysfunctional and polarized US election since the 19th century, since the period of reconstruction.
An Israeli soldier looks on from a vehicle near the Israel-Gaza border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Israel, April 30, 2024.
Despite offering a watered-down hostage deal proposal to Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said an invasion of Rafah — the southern Gaza city where over a million Palestinians are sheltering — would move forward “with or without” a cease-fire.
Netanyahu's statement is likely meant to placate far-right members of his coalition government amid news of progress in truce negotiations. Hardliners want Israel to invade Rafah and have threatened to collapse the government if they don’t get their way.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the region for cease-fire talks, which come amid an ongoing push by the Biden administration for Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel — a deal that would be a big diplomatic win for the White House during an election year. In exchange, Riyadh wants increased security cooperation with the US and help setting up a civilian nuclear program.
Still, Riyadh is unlikely to agree without commitments from Israel to work toward a pathway for Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu opposes.
Where things stand. There are significant obstacles to a new cease-fire and Israeli-Saudi normalization. As Hamas mulls its response to Israel’s latest proposal, Blinken is set to meet with Bibi on Wednesday — and is expected to press him on increasing the flow of aid into Gaza.
David Sanger, Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times journalist and author of "New Cold Wars," discusses the evolving relationship between China and Russia, highlighting its asymmetry and significance in today's geopolitical landscape. He points out how much the tables have turned. During the Cold War of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union was the dominant power when it came to its relationship with China. Decades later, it's clear that China holds the upper hand. "China holds more cards than the Russians do," Sanger tells Ian Bremmer. Not only that, Russia's Vladimir Putin needs China's Xi Jinping by his side in order to prevail in his war with Ukraine. "He [Putin] needs that Chinese technology desperately... He does not have a choice except to deal with the Chinese on Chinese terms right now."
And what does that mean for China's interests when it comes to the United States? "If you're Xi," Sanger says, "the two best things that can happen to you is that the US is tied up in Ukraine or ripping itself apart about the aid and consumed again in the Middle East." And at least in that respect, Xi seems to be getting everything he wants.
Watch Ian Bremmer's full interview with David Sanger on GZERO World - Are we on the brink of a new cold war?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
- The biggest threats to US national security, foreign and domestic ›
- The next era of global superpower competition: a conversation with the New York Times' David Sanger ›
- The limits of a China-Russia partnership ›
- Will China end Russia’s war? ›
- Xi’s “peace” plan for Ukraine: China “wins” ›
- Russia & China vs “the West” ›
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