On the morning of Friday November 29 — also International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people — protestors gathered at Mary Booth Lookout Reserve on Cammeraygal land to march on Kirribilli House to demand:
- an end to the Australian government and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s complicity in the genocide in Palestine and,
- a change to Australian foreign policy, including fulfilling its responsibility to support Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty.
Organisers cited Australia’s endorsement of the 1947 United Nations (UN) Partition Plan and the “ongoing political alignment with policies that have enabled the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories” as contributing to Australia’s complicity in the oppression of Palestinians.
The Partition Plan and Palestinian statehood
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT), “Australia was the first country to vote in favour of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, which ultimately led to the creation of Israel as a nation state.” Australia was also involved in the drafting of the plan that stipulated the creation of two states: Israel and Palestine.
Internationally, Palestine is yet to be recognised as a state by all member nations of the UN while domestically, a Greens motion was voted down in the House of Representatives in May this year.
In November, Australia supported Uganda’s draft proposal at the UN’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial) to recognise the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources”.
Australia’s official stance remains that it “does not recognise a Palestinian state” but that it is committed to a “two-state solution”.
Protest
Chair Labiba Abdellatif from Wollongong Friends of Palestine opened with an Acknowledgement of Country, reminding attendees that “from Gadigal to Gaza, land back, sovereignty was never ceded.”
Marking today as partition day, Abdellatif began by saying “we stand here at the colonial landmark that is the Harbour Bridge… down the road from the second residence of the PM of this colony”.
She explained that the stances of both Labor and the Liberals on Palestine are shameful and that “we can’t expect yesterday’s coloniser to condemn today’s”.
Abdellatif continued by saying that “Albanese thinks that our tax money is better spent in arms deals with Israel” instead of using that money to address domestic violence, the rise in Islamophobia, the cost-of-living crisis and housing affordability.
She also critiqued those who advocate for the women and children suffering in Gaza and exclude men, saying “spare us the selective feminism that only serves to facilitate white supremacy”.
Nour Salman, Naarm-based activist and expert in South-West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) geopolitics and history spoke next, arguing that “there’s not much more we can say or talk about”.
“As I stand on stolen land… next to a coloniser’s residence and a place by coloniser Dr Mary Booth”, Salman said, “we do not accept the Partition Plan”, explaining that Palestine does not only comprise of Gaza and the West Bank but “Palestine is from the North to the South, East to the West”.
She noted that while the south of Lebanon is “back in the hands of the people”, Israel had intended for an “expansionist policy”.
“We let them continue to ravage the traditional land of Palestinian people… in Lebanon and Syria”, Salman added before reiterating the connection to land and reaffirming that Gaza will be rebuilt once more.
Abdellatif spoke again, saying that while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are officially war criminals per the International Criminal Court arrest warrant, the Palestine solidarity movement, protests and boycotts are what forced that outcome.
Ihab Abu Ibrahim, Palestine activist and founder of the sit-in intifada in Naarm added that we are standing “on top of the mountain of [First Nations] suffering” and that “the Indigenous of every land have to be free of their settler colonialists everywhere”.
“Palestine will never get liberated from inside Palestine,” Abu Ibrahim continued, “Palestine will be liberated by the movement of the Palestinians and steadfastness inside Palestine and by us outside.”
“They try to separate us but we are united…We will continue to go to privileged places… so get out of your mansions [and] bear witness”, he concluded.
Adbellatif then noted that the Australian government is yet to cut its two-way arms deal with Israel, and that it continues to supply the armoured steel protecting “the tanks that go into Palestinian land and destroy”.
Afterwards, protesters marched towards Kirribilli House. They were accompanied by police officers, who stood in front of the gates.
The crowd chanted “down down with occupation, up up with liberation”, “from the sea to the river, Palestine will live free”, and “Albanese you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide”.
