Seven people were arrested Thursday by Montreal police during a pro-Palestinian “sit-in” demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held at the county office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in the Villeray district north of Montreal.
The activity was organized at the initiative of the Montreal chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement (MPJ), which invited its members to come to show their solidarity with Palestine via its Instagram page, in particular.
“We demand that Canada use its tax dollars to send aid, food, water, shelter and everything the Palestinian people are asking for,” the group explained on social media.
A spokesperson for the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM), agent Julien Lévesque, mentioned in the evening that an operation had been held on the scene.
“The building manager had to close at 6 p.m., like every day, and people stayed inside and refused to leave. They were therefore taken out of the building,” said Mr. Lévesque.
Videos posted by members of the organization on Instagram also suggest that the police were about to “escort” the demonstrators outside Justin Trudeau’s offices. Another video posted shortly before 8 p.m. showed demonstrators still in front of the building’s exit.
Police say they have arrested seven people for obstruction. However, no excesses occurred during the gathering, said Mr. Lévesque.
Moreover, this weekend, the MPJ invites demonstrators to meet again around 2 p.m. at Dorchester Square to “protest the ongoing genocide against our people in Gaza at the hands of the brutal Zionist occupation.” “Let’s show Canada that we will continue to demonstrate until we receive an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of the inhumane siege of Gaza and an end to all Canadian complicity in the Zionist occupation,” argued the ‘body.
High tensions
This all comes as Mr. Trudeau reiterated his calls for calm on Thursday, against a backdrop of growing tensions linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, two Jewish schools were notably targeted by gunfire in Montreal. The two establishments are located in the Côte-Des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-De-Grâce and Outremont borough.
The affair led to a wave of condemnations throughout the political sphere, both in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec. “It is a form of terrorism,” even argued the Minister of Education Bernard Drainville, while Prime Minister François Legault asked the police forces not to tolerate any hateful attacks, deeming these events “totally unacceptable”.
On Wednesday, a scuffle also occurred at Concordia University and left three people injured, when demonstrators opposed a group of Jewish students who had placed posters of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on a table.