The extraordinary faculty of the University of Barcelona (UB) has approved to submit to the university’s governing team and council the motion of Universitats amb Palestine and the Palestine UB Group, which requests “the breaking of institutional and academic relations” with Israeli institutions, in solidarity with Palestine. With these statements, the camp of students protesting against Israel’s attacks on Gaza would have broken up.
The students, however, voted yesterday in an assembly to continue their presence in the UB cloister in the face of the “brutal offensive against Rafah.” They thus join the indefinite camps that are spreading through Spanish universities (Valencia, the Basque Country, Madrid or Granada), European and American universities.
However, their presence could interfere in the electoral process next Sunday when the Generalitat elections are held. The headquarters of the UB is an electoral college.
The students have agreed to continue, ensuring that they will not interfere in the electoral process, proclaiming themselves a
democratic movement. “We insist, we do not want to interrupt the citizens’ vote,” they say in a statement.
For their part, sources from the UB have indicated that its management does not have powers in matters of security during voting since it is limited to giving up the space. “This is an electoral center like a school or a civic center,” they point out. Therefore, it is the Electoral Board that must evaluate the issue.
The motion, approved this Wednesday with 59 votes in favor, 23 against and 37 abstentions, calls for breaking relations with universities, research centers and other Israeli institutions that have not expressed their rejection of the violence in Gaza.
The rector of the UB, Joan Guàrdia, recalled that this is not the first university faculty to approve a document of these characteristics and that the current situation in Gaza cannot be treated indifferently by the university: “From an institution that uses science as a mechanism to face reality, we cannot be indifferent.”
“From the first moment we have been acting with colleagues in the educational community who have been mistreated. We will maintain our commitment to serve the educational community that is distressed by this unbearable barbarity,” he added.
The document requires the university’s governing bodies to break institutional and academic relations with Israeli institutions “as a mechanism of pressure on the State of Israel until the genocide is over and the Israeli apartheid system is eradicated and the colonization of Palestine.
It is also urged not to contribute to the “perpetuation of the Israeli occupation of Palestine” and demands that the Government and the Generalitat break relations with Israel, starting with the end of the arms trade.
“It is time for the UB to be faithful to its principles and put an end to the complicit silence in the face of the Palestinian genocide at the hands of Israel,” and calls not to remain silent, in his words, and for the UB to break relations with Israeli institutions.
Some of the members of the faculty have rejected the motion because they consider that it is “not up to the university” to take a position on this conflict, alluding to the Organic Law of the University System (Losu), and they consider that it would be a mistake for the UB to endorse this document for including words like ‘genocide’ or ‘apartheid’.
