Pro-Palestinian protesters brace for Monday deadline after presenting counter offer to U of T administration

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators who have been camped out at the University of Toronto for weeks are bracing for a showdown Monday as the deadline to vacate the premises approaches.

Protesters have been given until 8 a.m. to leave the encampment after the university issued a trespass notice on Friday. But the demonstrators say they don’t plan to go anywhere until the school complies with their demands.

The two sides met again on Sunday as the protesters presented a counter-offer to school administrators with an encampment spokesperson expressing hope it will encourage the university to speedily divest itself of investments in companies profiting from Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

As of 10 p.m. Sunday, there were no updates from either the protesters nor the university.

“We feel the university has stopped playing games or at least presenting that they are negotiating and they’re simply showing their true face,” said Mohammad Yassing. “What we’ve done is honed in on parts of the demands that were contentious in our negotiations and parts that we think the university could easily snap their fingers and do.”

The protesters planned to ask the university to immediately disclose its public investments linked to Israel’s offensive and to form a joint working group to study its private investments.

The protesters also prefer a working group to the ad hoc committee the school proposed, which they argue could drag out the divestment process and end with no action.

Also in the counter offer was a demand for the school to cut ties with the Hebrew University, which they claim has a presence in illegal settlements, and with the Technion, an Israeli technology institute they allege works with artificial intelligence-based technology Israeli forces use to pinpoint bombing targets.

The university said it was looking forward to Sunday’s meeting while adding that if the encampment remains non-compliant with the trespass notice, “we will be proceeding to court to seek injunctive relief through an urgent hearing.”

The protesters say they have lawyers prepared to fight any injunction that comes their way.

“Representatives from our legal team will be going to court to fight UofT’s injunction that they’re trying to obtain,” Erin Mackey, a spokesperson for the protest organizers, tells CityNews. “UofT is spending big bucks to ensure that they are able to obtain authorization to allow Toronto police to come and raid this encampment.”

“It’s really appalling that UofT is even threatening to call the police, let alone go into the courts and ask the courts to call the police to be here. What does that say about this institution.”

The protesters have also picked up the support of the Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario.

Federation president Laura Walton said in a Saturday letter to Meric Gertler, UofT’s president, that she was “disappointed” the school had issued a trespass notice and urged him to “reverse course immediately and choose negotiations and discussion over ultimatums and repression.”

Walton told Gertler she planned to host a solidarity rally at the grassy expanse of King’s College Circle where protesters have pitched their tents since May 2. The rally is set to begin at the same time as the deadline provided on the trespass notice.

“If, by then, you decide to move against the students, you’ll have to go through the workers first,” Walton wrote to the school’s president.

Encampments on university campuses have cropped up across Canada in recent months, with several universities grappling with how to appease protesters and free up their spaces again.

Over the last month demonstrators have taken over sites at the University of Calgary, McGill University in Montreal and the University of British Columbia, University of Victoria and Vancouver Island University in B.C.