Attendees at pro-Palestine rallies have been urged to remain peaceful as political leaders say it is “regrettable” the demonstration is taking place.
Supporters of Palestine will rally in cities across Australia on Sunday, a day before the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel.
A heavy police presence is expected at the events, with demonstrators warned not to display symbols linked to designated terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.
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While police in NSW sought to block the Sydney rally from taking place, an agreement reached with organisers allowed the event to go ahead with an altered route.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the timing of the protest should have been different.
“The protests that are happening over the course of today and tomorrow are deeply regrettable,” he told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“The anniversary of October 7 needs to be about October 7 and what happened on that day was the loss of more than 1000 innocent lives.
“It’s the anniversary of that that we will be remembering today and tomorrow.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns said while he supported the right for people to protest in public, the demonstration should not have been organised near the anniversary.
“My view is that it lacks compassion to hold a rally or a demonstration or a protest on that day,” he told Sky News.
“We’ve got an obligation to keep the public safe in a difficult time, and when tensions are high, there’s a high prospect of clashes or violence on Sydney streets.
“Most people would agree that we’re not going to do much about Middle Eastern violence from Sydney, and we have to do everything we possibly can to prevent that kind of violence in Sydney.”
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said the federal government should have made a bigger effort to persuade community leaders not to have the protest.
Though a decision on whether rallies would be able to go ahead lay with state police forces, Senator Paterson repeated calls for the rally to be held at a different time.
“(Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) should have gone direct to community leaders and used the relationships and the status of the office of prime minister that he holds to say ‘this is unacceptable and it must not proceed’,” he told Sky News.
“We’re not saying that you can’t protest the Palestinian cause, we’re just saying pick any other day of the year than October 7.”
Labor MP Josh Burns said there was no way for the federal government to intervene with the pro-Palestine rallies.
He said Jewish Australians needed to be allowed to grieve on the anniversary.
“I don’t think that the message of protesting on October 7 does anything else other than then really make people who are grieving feel even more upset and more uncomfortable,” he told Sky News.
More than 1200 people were killed on the October 7 attack and 250 were taken hostage, according to the Israeli government.
In response, Israel unleashed a bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza, killing almost 42,000 people, displacing 1.9 million and leaving another 500,000 with catastrophic levels of food insecurity, local health ministry sources report.
Israel’s military campaign has now spread to Lebanon as it hunts down senior figures in Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group backed by Iran and designated a terrorist organisation by Australia.