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NEW DELHI: Hundreds of people gathered for a protest organized by Indian university students in New Delhi on Friday to demand that the government act against Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire in Gaza and renewed deadly strikes on its population.
Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire with the Palestinian group Hamas on Tuesday by bombarding displaced people sleeping in tents. At least 400 — half of them children — were killed, while hundreds more were severely injured.
The ceasefire was mediated by the US administration in January. Israel earlier violated the agreement by stopping all aid, electricity and water from entering Gaza — days before it launched the wave of deadly airstrikes. About 700 people have been killed since.
“The Indian government should take a stand. They should reassert our traditional stand on Palestine,” Dhananjay, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union told Arab News.
The union is part of the All India Students’ Association, which organized the protest at Jantar Mantar site in the center of New Delhi.
“The way Israel keeps on pounding Gaza and kills more than 400 people in one day despite the ceasefire, this I feel is an attack on humanity and all civilizational values.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry estimates that at least 49,617 Palestinians have been confirmed dead and 112,950 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. The real toll is likely to be much higher as thousands of people are missing under the rubble.
About 500 people, including students and members of other groups such as the All India Progressive Women’s Association, joined the protest to demand a return of India’s historical support for Palestine.
Many years before the establishment of Israel, Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India’s freedom movement, had opposed a Jewish nation-state in Palestine, deeming it “inhumane.” For decades, other Indian leaders also viewed Palestinian statehood as part of the country’s foreign policy.
The support has only waned recently, with the current government in New Delhi being mostly quiet in the wake of Israel’s deadly siege and onslaught on Gaza and forging partnerships with Tel Aviv.
“We are registering our resistance, our voices in support of Palestine and against the kind of partnership that we are seeing between India and Israel ... India and Israel have partnerships on each front — we are the second largest exporter of Israeli arms, several Indian companies are manufacturing arms in partnership with Israeli companies ... and we are sending workers to Israel,” said Ambika Tandon, doctoral student at a university in Delhi.
“These partnerships of arms manufacturing are making India directly complicit in the ongoing war crimes in Gaza.”
Anjali, another student and member of the India for Palestine collective, said links with Israel were affecting Indians too, especially young people.
“Young people should be very concerned ... The Indian state is playing a role in this genocide and its friendship with Israel is harming citizens of India,” she told Arab News.
“Israel has broken the ceasefire. They don’t understand the meaning of ceasefire ... We have gathered here today to create some pressure on the Indian government to take a stand against what Israel is doing.”
The protesters believed that India had the leverage to play a meaningful role in stopping Israeli massacres.
“India should immediately pressurize Israel, the US, and Western powers to stop the bombardment. It should bring the third-world countries united,” said N. Sai Balaji, former president of the JNU Students Union.
“The open, brazen violation of the ceasefire unilaterally by Israel — supported by the US — clearly shows that they were never intended to bring any peace ... The silence of leaders across the world, even our own Indian prime minister and Indian government, it not just shameful but a disgrace on the history of India’s solidarity with Palestine.”

BRUSSELS: European Union leaders are now in agreement that the EU must be fully capable of defending itself against a Russian attack by 2030, despite earlier resistance to the deadline from some countries, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday.
Europe is dramatically stepping up spending on defense because of concern that the United States, which had guaranteed Europe’s security since the end of World War Two, was no longer keen to do so, shifting its attention to the Indo-Pacific.
But not all EU countries are equally committed to higher defense spending, especially those geographically further from Russia.
Speaking after a summit of EU leaders that discussed the EU plan to step up defense readiness, Tusk said countries now spending less than others on defense had been reluctant to accept the five-year scheme proposed by the European Commission.
“Behind the scenes... it stirred some emotions. Especially in countries that spend little on defense now. There are several large countries that still spend very little. And they don’t want to spend more. For now,” Tusk told a press conference.
NATO member Spain spent 1.28 percent of GDP on defense in 2024 and Italy spent 1.49 percent, falling well short of the agreed NATO target of 2 percent of GDP, despite three years of war in Ukraine and US pressure to further raise the NATO defense spending target.
Slovenia, Belgium and Portugal also spend between 1.29 percent and 1.55 percent of GDP on defense. Italy plans to increase military spending to 1.6 percent of GDP in 2027, while Spain wants to reach NATO’s spending target of 2 percent of GDP only before 2029.
“Our position, shared with Denmark and Sweden, was that the more Russia has the advantage today, the more we have to hurry. We finally accepted, as the European Council, this commitment that by 2030 Europe must obtain full defense capabilities,” Tusk said. “By 2030 Europe must be, in terms of army, weapons, technology, clearly stronger than Russia. And it will be.”
Tusk said the five-year deadline corresponded to analysis by NATO head Mark Rutte that this was the amount of time Europe had before Russia rebuilt its offensive capabilities, after losses suffered in Ukraine, sufficiently to be ready to attack Europe.
He made clear this did not mean Europe expected an attack by Russia in 2030.
“It is key that Europe be really capable to defend itself and deter Putin,” Tusk said. “Or, it is less about defending and more about showing through facts, decisions, that Putin’s Russia does not stand a chance against Europe that is united and well-armed. It is the only effective method to avoid a war.”