About 20 tents were set up on McGill University's campus in downtown on Saturday, which students described as a show of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and they joined a wave of similar protests occurring across American universities amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

On Saturday afternoon, organizers could be heard through megaphones asking that as many people as possible stay in the camp overnight. McGill University's media relations department said in a statement sent on Saturday that a larger group of protesters participating in a protest in downtown Montreal later joined, but many of them left the campus by 7:30 PM.

Protesters are demanding that McGill and Concordia universities "divest from funds entangled in the Zionist state as well as [cut] ties with Zionist academic institutions," according to a statement sent by Zainab Ali, a McGill University student involved in the protest, to the CBC News network.

Ali referenced a dataset published on April 18 by McGill's organization for the hunger strike for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine. It includes 50 companies in which McGill University invests, and the organizations say they are "complicit in supporting the apartheid regime in Israel."

A statement from McGill University sent to CBC News on Saturday indicated that two members of the university’s senior management team told the group "they could raise their concerns about divestment through the appropriate processes at the university," but so far, the committee reviewing those issues at McGill has not expressed concern about this matter.

The statement noted that McGill does not invest directly in individual stocks or companies because the external fund managers appointed by the university choose "investments in separate accounts and pooled funds, which are constantly changing in composition."

Israel launched its war against Hamas following the militant group's attacks on October 7. During the attacks, around 1,200 people were killed, and approximately 250 hostages were taken, according to Israeli statistics. More than 130 hostages remain held in Gaza, among them women and children.

Health authorities in Gaza say the Israeli attack on Gaza has resulted in the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians — most of them women and children — and has led to an imminent famine risk, the destruction of major hospitals, and according to the United Nations, the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians.

The Montreal branch of the Palestinian Youth Movement described the camp as "open-ended," adding that it refuses to allow universities "to be complicit in genocide," in a social media post on Instagram.

Another student group, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, also urged students and university staff to join in a Facebook post.

In an email to CBC News sent on Saturday, McGill University stated that it was aware of the camp's occurrence and supports its students’ right to freedom of expression and assembly within the bounds of university policies and laws. It added that the Dean of Students and a representative from McGill Security instructed the protesters to remove their tents, but they refused.

The media relations office confirmed on Saturday evening that the protest was peaceful and contained in the lower field.