Campus protests over Gaza war hit Australia

Hundreds of supporters of Israel and Gaza faced off at a Sydney university, bringing echoes of US college protests and Middle East tumult to a campus and continent on the other side of the world.

Rival demonstrators came eye-to-eye shouting slogans and waving flags. Still, except for a few heated exchanges, the protest and counterprotest passed off peacefully.

But it was another sign that the war in Gaza, approaching its seventh month, and the long-rumbling US culture wars are roiling politics oceans away.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been camped for 10 days on a green lawn in front of the University of Sydney's sprawling Gothic sandstone edifice -- a bastion of Australian academia.

The dozens of tents festooned with banners and Palestinian flags have become a focal point for hundreds of protesters -- students and otherwise -- who oppose Israel's ground invasion and bombardment of Gaza.

Similar to their US counterparts, the protesters want to see Sydney University cut ties with Israeli institutions and reject funding from arms companies.

Sydney University administrators are keen not to replicate the US experience.

Vice-chancellor Mark Scott has written to students and staff expressing a "commitment to freedom of expression" and has not called on the police to dismantle the camp.

Australian police were conspicuously absent even during protests, which brought about 100 pro-Israel counterprotesters face-to-face with 400 demonstrators at the pro-Palestinian camp.

Public order and riot squad vehicles were parked well out of view, on the periphery of the campus.

Security was left to university guards who exchanged jokes with each other about their ill-fitting high visibility coats while forming a very porous separating barrier between the opposing camps.