On the 3^rd of August, 2025, huge crowds crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge in heavy rain. They carried Palestinian flags, empty pots and photographs of children killed by Israeli forces or subjected to starvation in Gaza.

This was not simply a large march for Palestine. It was a public declaration that justice cannot be divided. That Palestinian lives deserve the same protection as all human lives. International law only has credibility when it is applied consistently, including when the state accused of serious violations enjoys strong political and military support from Western governments.

On that day, Palestine stood at the centre of one of Australia’s most recognised landmarks, and a broad and powerful public movement became visible. It was ready to defend Palestinian rights, but also something wider: the right to life, freedom from starvation and forced displacement, equality before the law, and accountability for those responsible.

One year later, it is not enough to remember the images or celebrate the size of the crowd. The real question is how we preserve the meaning of that day and turn an exceptional moment into a lasting public tradition.

I believe the 3^rd of August should become an annual people’s day of solidarity with Palestine in Australia. It should be a day of memory, accountability and organising. A day when the movement reflects on its own experience, holds the government to account, and renews its demands for justice and respect for international law.

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For me, the Bridge march was not only a public political event. I walked as a Palestinian from Gaza carrying a deep personal loss. I lost seven members of my immediate family: my father, my brother Ehab, his wife and their four children. My father died after being denied enough medicine, food and water. My brother and his family disappeared in the rubble. Their remains have still not been found.

I was in Australia at the time, following news of my family from far away. I made phone calls, wrote letters, contacted officials and joined protests. But everything I could do paled beside the scale of the catastrophe.

There is a particular pain carried by Palestinians in the diaspora. You know your family is in danger. News and images reach you, but there is a distance you cannot cross. You cannot reach them or protect them.

Then came the Bridge march. Standing among the vast crowd, I felt that I was no longer carrying this loss alone. Of course, the march could not bring back those I had lost or end Gaza’s suffering. But it restored something I feared I was losing: faith in the ability of people to come together and act for justice.

One of the messages of the march, to me and to other Palestinians, was that our families were not simply numbers passing through the news. It as a demonstration that large parts of Australian society refused to accept the killing, starvation and displacement of Palestinians as normal.

The Bridge did not only carry me from one side of the Harbour to the other. For a moment, it carried me from the isolation of grief into the strength of solidarity.

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Palestine Action Group Sydney organised the event under the name March for Humanity. Before it took place, New South Wales Police went to court seeking to stop the gathering. They raised concerns about safety and crowd management. On the day before the march was due to take place, the NSW Supreme Court rejected the police application. It was a victory for the right to protest.

Peaceful protest does not lose its legitimacy because it disrupts traffic or the normal rhythm of a city. Its purpose is to make visible and audible the issues that those in power may prefer to ignore.

The Court did not give the march its power, however. The people did. Legal rights become political power only when people decide to use and defend them. By marching in spite the rain, the hostile tones of the public debate and a legal injunction, the crowd gave real meaning to the right to protest.

The march also presented a different picture of Palestine’s place in Australian society.

For a long time, parts of Australian politics and media treated Palestine as a distant foreign issue, or as a conflict too complicated for ordinary people and best left to diplomats and experts. Palestinians were often expected to explain occupation, siege, settlement and displacement from the beginning, and then prove that their lives and voices deserved protection and attention.

The Bridge march said something different. The crowd was not made up only of Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims. Workers, students, unionists, doctors, academics, artists, families, church groups from all ethnic groups took part, alongside public and political figures.

This diversity showed that solidarity with Palestine was not only a matter of national or religious identity. People came because Palestine had become a test of what justice itself means.

The decision to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge was not accidental. It is one of Australia’s most famous symbols. Its image is closely tied to national celebrations, tourism and the way Australia presents itself to the world.

When Palestinian flags covered the Bridge, the crowd changed the meaning of the landmark, even if only for a few hours. It was no longer simply a beautiful background to the city. It became a space for defending human values, freedom and justice, and for questioning the position taken by the state and society towards the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza.

The march also made the true scale of public solidarity visible. Estimates differ, but crowd-safety expert Aldo Raineri placed attendance between 225,000 and 300,000 people. What is beyond dispute is that it was one of the largest protests in modern Sydney history.

Even more important than the number was what the march revealed. Solidarity with Palestine is not a passing position or one confined to a single community. It is a broad social force built around clear demands for justice, equality and accountability.

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The march also exposed the distance between the clarity of public feeling and the lagging of government policy. On 27 October 2023, Australia abstained from a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce. It did not vote in favour of a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire until 12 December.

That delay was not justified by the scale of what was already happening in Gaza. The public demands were already clear: stop the killing and starvation, protect civilians, and apply international law without double standards. Australia is also a party to the United Nations Genocide Convention. The duty to prevent genocide does not begin after a catastrophe has ended. It cannot be reduced to statements of concern or humanitarian aid after the destruction has taken place.

Almost three years later, we can say that the solidarity movement has changed public debate more than it has changed the government’s stance. The march brought Palestine into the centre of a national symbol. It showed the breadth of support for Palestinian rights. It defended the right to protest and widened the space for public dissent.

But governments can wait for public anger to fade unless it becomes sustained pressure. The answer is not to replace street protest with political and institutional work. The street should become a starting point for it.

This is why I believe that the 3^rd of August deserves to become an annual people’s day of solidarity with Palestine in Australia. I do not mean an official occasion that waits for government recognition. I mean a tradition that begins within society itself: among solidarity groups, unions, universities, Palestinian organisations, churches, Jewish groups opposed to the occupation, human rights organisations, artists and writers.

It could be a day of marches, public discussions, cultural events and testimony from Palestinian families. It could also be a day to review Australia’s policy. What has changed? What has the government done to support international law and accountability? Where has it failed? In this way, it could become more than a day of remembrance. It would become a day of accountability, organising and renewed alliances.

For me, the 3^rd of August will remain the day I felt that I was no longer carrying my loss alone. For the solidarity movement, it could become the day it renews its strength each year and reaffirms that solidarity does not end at the bridge. It begins there.

Image: sydpalpics on Instagram