Several hundred pro-Palestinian supporters marched on Gadigal country, from Sydney Town Hall to the Sydney Opera House on Monday evening.
The snap rally was organised as renewed conflict broke out near the Gaza Strip last weekend, when over 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in what the militant group, Hamas, has termed, ‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’. Some have termed the killings as a massacre.
The action has come after years of increasingly repressive measures taken against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by the Israeli government, which has swung even further to the far-right in recent times under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Violence and murders by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank have been on the rise, with a rate of around three attacks on Palestinians every day since the start of 2023.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is, of today, preparing for a full-scale ground invasion into the Gaza Strip, where shelling and airstrikes have seen the death toll already rising past 1,000 people. Water, power and food supplies have been cut off in a seige of Gaza that could last months. The world is bracing for many more Palestinian deaths over coming days and weeks. The United Nations envoy to Palestine has called the Israeli campaign as “nothing less than genocidal”.
This has all occurred in the midst of significant geo-political posturing, which has heightened tensions across the region.
Monday’s march on the Sydney Opera House was sparked by a decision of the NSW State Government to project the colours of the Israeli flag on the sails of the Opera House, a decision that some saw as one-sided and provocative. Organisers of the rally declared that they were disappointed by the actions of a small group of demonstrators who burned the Israeli flag and let off flares, saying they did not represent the large bulk of Palestinian supporters in attendance.
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