– Proscription of anti-arms protest group shields Israel’s war economy from direct action.
– Move criminalises solidarity with Palestine, provoking legal outcry and grassroots defiance
The UK government is moving to ban Palestine Action, a protest group targeting British arms firms linked to Israel’s military, by designating it a terrorist organisation under anti-terror laws. The decision will criminalise membership, support, and fundraising for the group — a move critics say equates direct action with terrorism.
In defiance of police restrictions, a protest in solidarity with Palestine Action took place on Monday in Trafalgar Square, after authorities banned it from being held outside Parliament by imposing an exclusion zone.
The backlash to the proscription has been swift. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called the move:
“An outrageous and authoritarian crackdown on the right to oppose genocide… draconian.”
MP Zarah Sultana voiced her support plainly: “We are all Palestine Action.”
Palestine Action, formed in July 2020, describes itself as a movement committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.
Group spokesperson Manaal Siddiqui spoke to the ethos of the grassroots organisation:
“Palestine Action is a direct action group who have majoritively focused on weapons factories that are operating on British soil and are complicit in the current genocide in Gaza, but also in the longer-term kind of oppression of the Palestinian people.”
Although legal challenges are expected, the effects will be immediate. The group will be barred from raising or receiving funds — a provision that has not stopped supporters from donating £130,000 since the ban was announced.
Findings in the 2024 report by the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), which sharply criticised how UK authorities have handled pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Netpol’s report found:
“Far from the difficult balancing act British policing insists it faces in maintaining political ‘neutrality’, police forces (and especially the Metropolitan Police) have been heavily influenced by an increasingly coordinated campaign of public pressure by the media, government ministers and pro-Israeli opponents of Palestine solidarity, demanding the police ‘do more’ to crack down on allegedly unacceptable protests.”
It also documented how anti-terrorism powers have been used to suppress Palestine solidarity, stating: “The use of anti-terrorism measures to target expressions of solidarity with Palestine as markers of radicalisation… has included a very broad interpretation of what constitutes ‘glorifying’ proscribed ‘terrorist’ organisations
In declaring Palestine Action a terror group, the UK government reinforces its uncritical alignment with Israeli military interests, while seeking to delegitimise those who act — sometimes disruptively — to oppose a siege that has killed thousands of Palestinians. The state’s swift use of terrorism laws to silence that opposition is, for many, a sign of moral complicity dressed in legal form.
