Following university encampment protests dotting the US map, the Students for Palestine organisation worked with the University of Sydney’s Students’ Representative Council (SRC), Sydney University Muslim Students Association (SUMSA) and the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN) to kickstart a protest at Australian universities, calling for an end to ties to weapons manufacturers like Thales and Raytheon, and educational institutions, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The University of Sydney (USyd), to give one example, is linked with these arms manufacturers in numerous ways — from former Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson sitting on the Australian board of Thales, to the University recently extending their research partnership. These manufacturers have supplied arms currently in use by Israel in Gaza, as well as in Iran and Iraq.

Initially, the media response to the USyd encampment varied in both pace and focus. Upon commencement, few media outlets covered the encampment, with the exception of Sky News Australia. In the last forty-eight hours alone, at the time of writing, media coverage of the encampment has escalated with regular coverage from The Guardian, Reuters, Channel 10 and Al Jazeera. USyd student activists like Shovan Bhattarai have also represented the encampment on national programs, such as The Project.

On Tuesday, April 23, a phalanx of tents was erected in the university’s iconic Quadrangle, making a significant visual impact for any student, staff member or tourist who crossed campus. This welcoming community greeted the hundreds of students who graduated during the week — a sobering reminder of the Palestinians students who will not be able to do so as their universities have been bombed into non-existence.

Over the course of the eleven days since the encampment began, the daytime and overnight crowd has ballooned in size. Students at other Australian universities are following suit,  including the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, Curtin University and the University of Queensland. Camps are now being erected at Deakin, Monash and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, as the movement spreads across the nation.

Although the Sydney campers smile at students each morning and begin conversations about Palestinian liberation, it would be remiss to disregard the uncomfortable reality of sleeping on the lawns. As Maeve Larkins from Students Against War reaffirmed that sleeping can be quite unpleasant with disrupting lights and noise; “no one’s here doing it for fun”. President of the SRC, Harrison Brennan, said the experience can be “tiring and pretty exhausting” — although also fundamentally “nourishing”.

Encampment organiser Shovan Bhattarai explained that campers are often “woken by the sounds of the Carillon bells”, which helps create a sense of unity and community at the start of each day. The daily agendas often include teach-in sessions with lecturers, screenings of anti-war or Palestinian movies and visits from various advocacy groups the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network’s President, Nasser Mashni. Speaking to Honi, Mashni cited these encampment efforts as “inspiring the nation of tomorrow” and to “know how important your struggle, your solidarity and the viability of what you’re doing” serves for Palestinian solidarity.

The camp has also seen an outpour of general community solidarity. The campers have never been just University of Sydney students, comprising instead a cross-section of students from various universities, community members and staff. The community’s generosity becomes apparent in the piles of food, drink, camping equipment and sanitary items amassing at the camp’s centre, with people bringing baked goods and supplies throughout the day to aid the overnight attendees.

Students For Palestine member Shovan Bhattarai, who set up one of the first tents, noted that she felt “compelled to do so after watching the scenes coming out of Columbia University.” Alongside fellow organisers, she wanted to “pick up the torch here at Sydney as well,” in spite of not knowing “exactly what to expect.” The solidarity aspect of the camp has since become of its defining features — not only leading the way for similar movements at other Australian universities but also in maintaining contact with other figures such as Red Flag editor Ben Hillier in New York.

SRC President Harrison Brennan has also slept on the Quad lawns all eleven nights. When Honi asked him why, he replied that it’s “important to challenge the institutions that are complicit in genocide.” The University of Sydney represents an ideal place to do so not only due to its “long history of activism and protests on-campus,” he went on to say, but because of its continuing ties to Israeli institutions and the way it has tied students’ education to “apartheid, occupation, conflict and the development of arms.” To Brennan, the community’s overwhelming support has afforded him and fellow campers “a mandate, a requirement” to continue pursuing these demands. In his own words: “rain, hail, wind or shine, we will be here.”

Many other protestors emphasised to us how powerful they found the experience of camping. Tyberius Seeto, editor of UTS’ student publication Vertigo, told Honi that “we haven’t seen anything like this” since the introduction of voluntary student unionism in 2005. SRC Education Officer Grace Street concurred, calling the encampment “one piece of the puzzle of the radical activism at Sydney Uni that people often refer to.” As a result, both campers have been thrilled by the outpour of community solidarity they have witnessed over the last eleven days. According to Street, the success of the camp reflects the fact that “student protestors don’t feel as heard”, and there are “a lot of people including Chris Minns telling kids to go back to school, not protest.” She’d like people to remember the encampment as “a peaceful, nonviolent protest that is sustainable”, as well as one “being disruptive and showing the university that we’re serious.”

The protestors we’ve spoken to have described the camp as a site of cooperation and political discussion between a varied cross-section of students and community members. Larkins remarked one night, over shisha, campers “chatted about a whole range of things about politics, strategy, in a much slower, sustained way which you don’t often get in activist spaces.”

The campers’ efforts, at USyd and beyond, build on decades of pro-Palestinian resistance in search of liberation. Campers intend on persisting until the University divests or responds to their demands. Clearly, nothing yet has stifled their commitment to solidarity with Palestine.

Image: Valerie Chidiac