Tara Santiago has sent in this report from King’s College London

King’s Occupation ends with significant success

After 13 days of occupation an agreement has finally been reached between the negotiation team and the Principle of King’s College London, Rick Trainor. As of 1200 hours today (Sunday) the student protesters will evacuate the lecture theatre on the Strand. Following regular, extensive dialogue the two representatives of the negotiation team have succeeded on seven of the eight demands, including five fully-funded scholarships to Palestinian students and a proposal to the Council Committee to advocate ‘a policy of investment which would attempt to avoid any investment in the arms trade’.

Concessions were made on the eighth demand which has proved to be the most controversial, demanding King’s revoke the honorary doctorate awarded to Shimon Peres for a rather amusing ‘recognition of the efforts of Mr. Peres to find a peaceful solution to conflicts in the Middle East’. It is rather ironic for a man who was responsible for launching the well-known ‘Grapes of Wrath Operation’ forcing 400,000 Lebanese to flee their homes, with almost 800 fleeing to the UN base in Qana that was subsequently shelled by the Israeli army killing 102 civilians. These concessions extend to the Principal ‘taking the opportunity to write personally to him, as an honorary graduate, about the concerns noted regarding the conflict’. This demand has particularly angered the conservative members of the Jewish Society who have been advertising Peres’ role in various posters using the faces of Richard Gere and Mikhail Gorbachev to state ‘he doesn’t think Peres is a war criminal’. One of the negotiation representatives, Tallha Abdulrazaq commented ‘We now have a platform from which to campaign against Peres’. The full statement given by the King’s Public Relations department can be seen on http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?news_id=998&year=2009.