Australian cities, universities brace for pro-Palestine protests

Demonstrators are marching during a pro-Palestinian rally in the central business district of Sydney. Photo / Getty Images

Communities across Australia face the possibility of heightened social unrest as supporters of Palestine call for an escalation in protest action.

Activist group Disrupt Wars is urging demonstrators to “shut down your city for Palestine” on Wednesday to mark the 76th anniversary of The Catastrophe.

Known in Arabic as The Nakba, the ethnic cleansing episode involved the mass displacement and dispossession of millions of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

As Israel continues its all-out ground invasion in Gaza, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee, the group has taken to social media, encouraging supporters not to “let things calm down” and to “escalate for Gaza” locally.

“To end the genocide, we must move from a student movement to an international, anti-genocide movement, from encampments to widespread social unrest,” it said.

Disrupt Wars said it would not disavow any actions taken by people to escalate the struggle for Palestine, whether they be hunger strikes or militant direct action.

“Anyone making excuses for de-escalation at this time is betraying the Palestinian people,” it said.

The calls are supported by pro-Palestine students at universities across Australia where a dozen encampments have popped up.

Members of Victoria’s Deakin University encampment are holding a rally on Wednesday evening in defiance of university management who have demanded they disband.

Deputy vice-chancellor Kerrie Parker ordered the “immediate dismantling and removal of the current encampment” at its Burwood campus on Monday, saying students had agreed to run the set up until Friday, May 10.

Parker said the protest was disrupting the function of the campus, warning the university would not tolerate “unacceptable language or behaviour that breaches our code of conduct”.

A little boy on the shoulders of his father chants through a megaphone during the demonstration in Melbourne. Photo / Getty Images

Students connected to the encampment have doubled down, vowing to buy their own generators if the university follows through with threats to shut down power and amenities.

Students at other encampments at Monash University in Victoria and Australian National University in the ACT say they have been threatened with academic punishments if they were caught breaching conduct codes.