Pro-Palestine students at Harvard University in the US have reportedly ended an encampment in solidarity with Palestine after reaching an agreement with the university administration.

“As a precondition for decamping, administration will retract suspensions,” the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) coalition of students said in a statement on Tuesday, May 14. 

“Administration has also offered us meetings regarding disclosure and divestment with members of the Harvard Management Company and “conversations” regarding the establishment of a Center for Palestine Studies” at the university, the statement added.

HOOP further mentioned that the agreement came after three weeks of Harvard “mobilizing all its resources to quietly choke us out.”

“Harvard shut its gates to the public, closed its building to the campers, suspended over twenty students, referred over 60 for further disciplinary charges, and turned Harvard Yard into a surveillance state. When students finished moving out of the Yard, police became the dominant presence,” the students stated.

Harvard is one of the several universities and colleges across the US which witnessed students holding mass encampments, calling for the learning institutions to cut ties with the Israeli regime and companies that support “Tel Aviv,” due to the occupation entity’s ongoing onslaught in Gaza that has now killed over 35,000 people, mostly women and children, since Oct.7, 2023. 

Most of the encampments resulted in violence by US Police as well as arrests of thousands of students, with some students facing suspension or expulsion from their universities. 

HOOP further clarified their stance, saying, “We are under no illusions: we do not believe that these meetings are divestment wins. These side deals are intended to pacify us away from full disclosure & divestments. Rest assured, they will not.”

According to the college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, the university’s spokesperson “Jonathan L. Swaine ensured the University will convince schools to begin processing petitions for reinstatement from involuntary leave.”

The students added that “We do not measure the success of our encampment in meetings, but rather in organizing capacity and consciousness.”

“The Harvard Liberated Zone ruptured our understanding of what we believed to be possible at an institution that serves as the rotten heart of a dying empire. It brought the student intifada to a school that trembles at the very world,” they said. “And it grew our organizing power such that we can only come back stronger in our fight for Palestine.”