Three people have been arrested after a rabbi struck a pro-Palestinian protester on a Manhattan street, with witnesses saying the 57-year-old driver, Reuven Kahane, tried to drive into the protesters on purpose.

New York Police Detective Melissa Delacruz said Tuesday's incident happened around 8:45 am [local time] near the intersection of 72nd Street and Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.

About 25 protesters had been wrapping up a demonstration outside a building and were walking away when two of them got into an argument with a driver. The driver then struck a 55-year-old protester with his vehicle.

The demonstrator was treated at a hospital for minor injuries. The motorist, the demonstrator and another demonstrator were taken into custody, Delacruz said.

Kahane is said to be a relative of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Zionist terror group, Jewish Defense League, and a fierce proponent of the expulsion of all Arabs from Palestine.

Meir Kahane, a former Israeli MP who was assassinated in 1990, was the founder of Jewish extremist Kach party which was banned in Israel after the 1994 murder of 29 Palestinians in Al Khalil city by one of his supporters.

Police officials told local media that Kahane is charged with second-degree assault, a designation in the New York Penal Code reserved for assaults where the perpetrator intends to cause serious injury and inflicts physical harm on the victim.

The offence entails a maximum potential sentence of 7 years imprisonment.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest [CUAD] — thestudentgroup that organised a protest sit-in on campus which sparked similar demonstrations at other colleges across the US — said anti-war protestors "were attacked on the crosswalk" by an "Upper East Side Zionist."

According to CUAD, the individual approached the demonstrators, who were peacefully urging Columbia to divest from companies collaborating with Israel and advocating for the US government to cease its support for the Israel army.

[Kahane] requested a flyer before seizing a protester by the arm.

He then "circled the block to drive into our peaceful demonstration," striking one person who was "arrested and handcuffed to the bed while in the hospital," CUAD added.

The demonstration was one of three protests on Tuesday morning in front of the homes of university trustees, according to members of CUAD.

Elsewhere pro-Palestinian student protesters at MIT breached police fencing to access an encampment, linking arms around tents on campus. They blocked a local thoroughfare while demanding an end to the violence in Gaza.

This comes as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony amid ongoing pro-Palestine demonstrations across America's top universities.

Since April 18, just over 2,600 students and faculty, protests against Israel's brutal war in Gaza, have been arrested in what has been dubbed as "Student Spring" on more than 50 campuses in the US.