Police moved against a pro-Palestinian protest camp at the University of California, Los Angeles, early Thursday, pulling apart a barricade and arresting multiple people after issuing orders for people to leave.

The police action unfolded over hours, with officers initially standing near the protest camp and briefly pushing into the area before retreating as protesters cheered.

About an hour later, a larger group of officers returned, and while they were initially stymied at one end of a plaza by hundreds of protesters clogging stairs and walkways, officers converged on the main protest camp from another direction and quickly began tearing away plywood, metal fencing and tents.

The protesters, who are demanding the university divest from Israel, chanted “peaceful protest” as police equipped with helmets, face shields and batons worked to push people from the area.

The UCLA protest is one of many pro-Palestinian demonstrations at college campuses across the country, which have resulted in hundreds of arrests.

Police in New Hampshire made arrests and removed tents late Wednesday and early Thursday at Dartmouth College.

A pro-Palestinian protest camp emerged at Dartmouth on Wednesday as administrators warned that such a camp would violate school policy.

In a letter to the campus community highlighting the policy, Provost David Kotz said the institution “remains deeply committed to dialogue across difference and open and willing to engage in conversation on difficult topics.”

Two students were arrested at Dartmouth in October after erecting a tent as part of a protest calling for divestment from Israel.

A group of Dartmouth students later engaged in a hunger strike to protest the arrests, and a Gaza solidarity rally on the campus last week drew more than 100 people on the campus.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, police cleared a pro-Palestinian camp following the arrest of at least 17 people.

In New York, police arrested at least 15 people Wednesday at Fordham University while clearing a pro-Palestinian protest camp.

At the University of Minnesota, protest organizers said late Wednesday their encampment would continue after they held talks earlier in the day with interim university President Jeff Ettinger. As at many of the schools, the protesters are calling for the university to divest from Israel. Ettinger described the talks as a “constructive dialogue.”

Columbia University administrators said Wednesday that all remaining academic activity for the semester, which is nearing its end, will be held remotely following protests that included the occupation of a campus building. Police cleared protesters late Tuesday and arrested nearly 300 people.

At a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday about Palestinian statehood, Israel’s ambassador condemned the student protesters.

“We always knew that Hamas hides in schools – we just didn’t realize that it’s not just schools in Gaza, but it's also Harvard, Columbia and many ‘elite’ universities” in the U.S., Gilad Erdan said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that people “have the right to peacefully protest as long as it’s within the law and that it’s peaceful.”

“We are talking about protecting students and making sure that they feel safe on campus,” Jean-Pierre said. “We're talking about a small group of students who are disrupting that ability for students to have that academic experience.”

Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration is “also going to call out any type of antisemitism that we are hearing, that we are seeing — the hate.”

Israel launched its counter-offensive in Gaza after Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group, launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people according to Israeli tallies, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Vowing to erase Hamas control of Gaza, Israel has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians in the territory along the Mediterranean Sea, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

VOA United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press and Reuters.