Demonstrators lock arms after retreating out of their encampment as law enforcement officers push them down Park Avenue and off the University of Arizona campus on May 10.

 Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

The pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Arizona said they were prepared for whatever the police response to their illegal encampment earlier this month would be.

They brought in helmets and drilled wooden pallets to secure their camp. They wore goggles for tear gas and went over what to do when they got arrested. The cause is that important to them, organizers said. One said they were willing to return and continually get arrested until the UA commits to divesting from Israel.

The problem? It’s illegal for the university to do so.

Arizona is one of 38 states in the country with specific laws making it illegal for state agencies to divest from Israel. The bill prohibiting state and local governments from divesting was first signed into law in 2016, with an update in 2022 that specifically bars the state’s public universities and community colleges from divesting.

β€œArizona and Israel have been longtime allies and trade partners, as has been the United States of America with Israel,” said Kimberly Yee, the state’s treasurer, who is a Republican elected to the post and a former state senator who worked on the 2016 legislation.

β€œThese types of bills are intended to support our friends (in) Israel as well as to continue to partner with them in a way that would protect their economic viability and stability, as well as really acknowledge their sovereignty,” Yee said.

What does divestment mean?

In simple terms, divestment means selling holdings deemed questionable. An example was when universities, buckling to the demands of student protesters in the 1980s, sold stock of companies that did business with South Africa when it was an apartheid state.

The sun sets on an encampment organized by a group called Students Against Apartheid on the University of Arizona campus on April 29.

Divesting from Israel can mean a plethora of things. The Students Against Apartheid group, which has organized the encampments and leads the divestment effort at the UA, is demanding the university divest from all companies β€œprofiting from the occupation of Palestine, the genocide of people in the Gaza strip,” but also diverges widely to add in β€œthe militarization of the US/Mexico borderlands/unceded O’odham and Pascua Yaqui territories.”

The group is also demanding that the UA disclose all financial connections to Israel and to weapons manufacturing, including to Tucson-based Raytheon Missiles & Defense.

A spokesperson for the university declined to comment for this article but in the past has said the UA’s senior leadership team is aware of the demands.

Do protesters know UA can’t meet their demands?

The encampment organizers are aware of the state law prohibiting public universities from divesting from Israel, a media spokesperson told the Star. But they contend the law itself is illegal.

β€œIt’s such a blatant violation of the First Amendment it’s almost laughable,” said Max, a graduate student at the UA who would not give his last name, saying he fears retaliation. β€œThe only reason it’s still standing is that nobody has appealed it in its current form. I would urge the university to break this law and appeal it.”

Max added that the group decided to camp out at the university and not, for example, the state Capitol, because they are β€œmore focused on what’s happening at the UA.” He said that if the university were to break state law and divest, he thinks it would ultimately win an appeal.

How else has this law taken effect?

This is not the first time divestment has been an issue in Arizona, though more recently, the state decided to divest from a company because of its pro-Palestinian roots.

Arizona Treasurer Kimberly YeeΒ 

In 2021, as state treasurer, Yee divested $143 million from all state-related investments involving Unilever, the parent company of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company, after the sweet treats business decided to boycott Israel by refusing to sell their product in the West Bank.

Yee said that after she pulled out from Unilever, other states, including New York and Florida, followed suit.

In October, Yee increased the state’s holdings of Israel bonds after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Chamber Business News reported. At that point, the Arizona State Treasurer’s Office had about $15 million in holdings in Israel bonds, much of which were purchased under Yee, the publication said.

Although she supports making political investment decisions such as the Unilever choice, Yee has spoken out against judging investments based on corporations’ environmental, social and governance policies.

She said the state treasurer’s office has a recent policy affirming it will not make investment decisions β€œfrom a social perspective.”

β€œI’ve always said that these types of policies do not belong in the investment space because they really do affect the consumer,” Yee said. β€œWe just want to make money.”

Pro-Palestinian protestors at the University of Arizona retreat after arrests.

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Reporter Ellie Wolfe covers higher education for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson.com. Contact: ewolfe@tucson.com. Follow her on X @elliew0lfe.