By Alex Mitchell 

Protesters will fight a police-led legal bid to curtail an anti-Israel rally at an Australian landmark on the grounds the move is unconstitutional.

The Palestine Action Group defends as “entirely appropriate” a rally on Sunday that would start in Sydney’s city centre and finish at the Sydney Opera House forecourt.

But Jewish leaders have taken the rare step of joining the police’s court push against the protest, which has echoes of a controversial snap rally held at the iconic building two nights after the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel in 2023.

The NSW Supreme Court elevated the matter to the state’s highest court for a hearing set on Wednesday, when pro-Palestine lawyers will argue police opposition to the protest is unconstitutional.

“You’d have to live in a vacuum not to be aware of the significant public importance of these proceedings to all members of the community,” Justice Ian Harrison said, citing the urgency required to have the matter finalised by Sunday.

NSW has a permit system that allows protest participants to block public roads and infrastructure unless a court denies permission due to a police challenge.

But a lawyer for the organisers argued a narrow reading of the protest legislation meant only relatively minor protections would be offered.

Specific offences relating to activities at the Opera House would not be covered, unduly constraining demonstrators’ implied constitutional right to political communication, they said.

“This case will have far-reaching ramifications, not only for the pro-Palestine movement, but for the right to protest in general in Australia,” their lawyer Nick Hanna told AAP.

Organisers have said the march is being held to protest against Israel’s offensive in Gaza and mark “two years of genocide”.

Police say the Opera House forecourt, which is mostly surrounded by water, is ill-equipped to handle the 10,000 attendees organisers expect.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Michele Goldman said the 2023 Opera House protest, during which chants of “where’s the Jews” broke out, was one of the darkest moments in the state’s history because the iconic location had been appropriated by anti-Israel demonstrators.

Along with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Ms Goldman’s organisation wants to join the police court bid to argue against the location of the protest.

But Justice Harrison said his reading of the Jewish groups’ evidence was “the location was less important than the protest march at all”.

The council’s co-chief Alex Ryvchin agreed and said authorities needed to have “a good hard look at the cost and the toll of these protests”.

“We’ve made our position clear for two years now, there is a right to protest which we respect, but no rights are unlimited,” he said.

Police challenged an August march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in court, arguing it would cause too much disruption to the city and on public safety grounds.

The NSW Supreme Court rejected that application, paving the way for more than 100,000 people to march across the bridge while demanding action to save dying and starving Palestinians.

Premier Chris Minns, who opposed the August march, has backed police in urging the organisers of Sunday’s rally to choose another part of Sydney.

Organisers said 10,000 people would attend but a Supreme Court judge on Friday warned against underestimating the strong community sentiment about the situation in Gaza, saying more than 100,000 could show up.

A separate protest to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attack is set for Tuesday evening.

The event organised by Stand For Palestine Australia has been called “Glory to our Martyrs”.

Some 1200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage during the Hamas cross-border attack on Israel two years ago.

The attack triggered an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.