Brisbane has amassed the largest pro-Palestinian crowd in the city’s history, rally organisers say, as thousands marched across Australia in a show of support for the Palestinian cause, days after famine was declared in Gaza for the first time.
In Brisbane, organisers estimated at least 50,000 people gathered for a rally they described as “historic”, with Queensland police putting the figure at 10,000.
In Melbourne, organisers said 100,000 marched – a figure at odds with Victoria police’s estimate of 10,000 – while in Sydney, rally organisers put the crowd at 100,000, in contrast to New South Wales police who estimated that 10,000 people took part in the public assembly.
Justice for Palestine Magan-djin spokesperson Remah Naji told Brisbane’s crowd on Sunday afternoon that it was “the biggest pro-Palestine rally that this city has ever seen”.
Sunday’s marches were expected by organisers to be the largest pro-Palestine demonstrations in Australia’s history, with every major Palestine organising group joining for a countrywide day of action in around 40 cities and towns.
Marchers demanding sanctions and an end to Australia’s arms trade with Israel were backed by more than 250 community organisations and unions, including the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Unions NSW, Hunter Workers, Unions WA and South Coast Labour Council.
Naji said the high turnout in Brisbane could be attributed to authorities banning protesters from marching across the Story Bridge. Organisers had to pivot after a magistrate on Thursday vetoed plans by organisers to march across the bridge on community safety grounds, which Queensland police acting assistant commissioner Rhys Wildman welcomed.
On Sunday afternoon, ferries were at capacity and city streets in Brisbane were swelling as thousands of demonstrators gathered at Queens Garden in the city centre before following an agreed alternative route on Victoria Bridge.
The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, was among them. She told Guardian Australia she estimated it was the “biggest gathering since those against the Iraq war”.
“I think it is a real show of sentiment by ordinary people that they know our government should be doing more and they want them to be doing more,” she said.
Jawad Al Maj, who came to Australia as a refugee from Iran, said he attended the Brisbane rally out of a sense of moral obligation. Al Maj was holding his two-year-old daughter Khadija, while his wife – sixth-generation Australian, Amira – pushed their one-year-old son Hussain in a pram.
“The difference between my kids and those kids in Palestine is geography. It’s luck,” the warehouse worker from Underwood said.
“It could have been my kids being blown up while Australia is silent.
“If I were in that situation I’d hope that people would speak up for me. So I’m speaking up.”
Palestine Action Group’s Sydney spokesman Josh Lees said the movement was the “biggest it’s ever been”, with Sunday’s protests coming just weeks after a crowd on 3 August estimated at between 90,000 to 300,000 marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge after a supreme court bid by NSW police to block the protest was defeated.
“That bridge march has generated so much momentum around the country,” Lees said. “The dam has burst in terms of support for Palestine and opposition to this genocide.”
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Protests began taking place from midday in every capital city on Sunday, as well as regional areas including Shepparton, Geraldton, Coffs Harbour, Katoomba, Tathra and the Pine Gap military intelligence base, some holding pro-Palestinian protests for the first time.
The action comes days after the United Nations confirmed famine in parts of the Gaza Strip for the first time, as Israel prepares for a military takeover of the entire city.
More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials – mostly women, children and elderly people – since the war stated after 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages at an Israeli music festival.
Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare.
In Canberra, independent senator for the ACT David Pocock was among the speakers who addressed a crowd of around 2,000 people in Civic Square, according to police estimates.
“As a middle power, we can and must be doing more,” he said.
“People care deeply, and they want a government that’s actually going to listen and then act.”
In Sydney, author and survivor advocate Grace Tame, journalist Antoinette Lattouf and NSW Teachers Federation president Henry Rajendra addressed a gathering at Hyde Park before marching to Belmore Park, while in Hobart, lord mayor Anna Reynolds and independent federal MP Andrew Wilkie were among those leading the crowds, estimated by organisers at around 4,000.
In Melbourne, protesters gathered at the State Library of Victoria before marching to the state’s parliament via Flinders Street station, attracting a crowd so large participants reported struggling to access the phone network.
Protesters cheered as people waved Palestinian flags from building windows and balconies, chanting “occupation no more” and “sanction Israel now” in the 97th consecutive weekend rally in the southern capital.
The Greens deputy leader, Mehreen Faruqi, was among those to address the crowd.
In the regional Victoria city of Shepparton, hundreds of adults and children walked the streets of the CBD chanting “Free Palestine” and “Freedom for Gaza”.
On the NSW south coast, organisers estimated around 500 people gathered in Tathra despite the rain and wind, marching across the the Mogareeka Bridge armed with a banner reading “Bega Valley for Palestine”.
“It’s not Sydney Harbour Bridge but the feelings of anger and frustration are the same,” one resident wrote on X.
In Brisbane, the emotions of the crowd vacillated between enthusiasm and hope to despair and outrage.
Magdalene Parkes, a physician at the Princess Alexandra hospital, said she simply could not stand to “see any more photos of children starving”.
“There is hope but there is also an element of sadness in the air as well,” she said. “A sense of grief that we still have to be out here.”
Zubeida, 55, an “ex-South African” of Indian heritage, said the turnout in Brisbane was “heartwarming”.
“We come from an apartheid regime, so we understand what apartheid is,” she said. “It is heartwarming to see so many people give up their Sunday afternoon to give voice to justice.”
Israel has rejected claims that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide, an argument that has also been brought against it before the international court of justice. The country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called the famine declaration an “outright lie”.
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
