A pro-Palestinian campaign group called Palestine Action will be prohibited under anti-terrorism laws in the United Kingdom on June 23. In the UK, this would make it illegal to be a member of Palestine Action, making it on par with armed organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
Human rights organizations have criticized the government’s announcement, which has sparked protests. Following protests between London’s Metropolitan Police officers and protesters, 13 people were detained on Tuesday and seven were charged. A racially aggravated offence and assaulting emergency personnel were among the charges.
Describe Palestine Action.
Palestine Action describes itself as a movement “determined to end global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.” In July 2020, the organization was established.
The organization claims it intends to target “corporate enablers” and businesses engaged in Israeli weapons production, such as Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, and Italian aerospace company Leonardo. The group has targeted these companies’ British locations.
According to Manaal Siddiqui, a Palestine Action spokesperson, “Palestine Action is a direct action group that has majoritively focused on weapons factories that are operating on British soil and are implicated in the Palestinian people’s ongoing genocide,” as well as the longer-term kind of oppression of the Palestinians,
The group broke into a Glasgow-based Thales equipment factory in 2022, causing more than 1 million pounds ($1.4 million) worth of damage.
Members of Palestine Action staged protests on the roof of Leicester’s subsidiary UAV Tactical Systems for six days before being detained by the police in 2021.
Why is Palestine Action prohibited in the UK?
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced in a statement on Monday that she had made the decision to enlist the organization under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Two military aircraft were sprayed with red paint by Palestine Action activists inside RAF Brize Norton, the largest station of the Royal Air Force in Oxfordshire, on June 20.
The activists sprayed red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft to repair their damaged engines with crowbars in the most famous move the organization has ever made.
In an X-post the same day, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a condemnation of the incident. He wrote, “Vandalism took place at RAF Brize Norton, which is haughty.”
According to the police, millions of pounds of criminal damage were caused by the Palestine Action activists’ actions.
In her Monday statement, Cooper stated that the scandalous attack on Brize Norton on Friday morning on June 20 was the most recent instance of unacceptable criminal damage that Palestine Action has committed.
However, Siddiqui claimed that Brize Norton stores will use aircraft “all over the world, but particularly in Gaza.” She continued, adding that Syria and Yemen have also used them.
More than 56, 000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s Gaza war, which started on October 7, 2023.
According to Siddiqui, “These aircraft can be used to refuel and have been used to refuel Israeli fighter jets.” Additionally, Brize Norton aircraft are transported to a British air base in Cyprus, where they are “dispatched on spy missions and intelligence is shared with the Israeli government and the Israeli air forces.
The British Air Force announced last year that it had carried out large-scale aid airdrops to Gaza. According to the air force, hundreds of tonnes of aid were dropped on April 9, 2024.
According to Siddiqui, “the amount of aid being dropped is an absolute drop in the ocean,” Siddiqui continued, noting that Gaza’s daily needs are met by the UN’s 2,300-tonnage aid.
How has Palestine Action responded to the threat of a ban?
Palestine Action stated in a statement posted on its X profile on Tuesday that the real crime is not the “red paint” being sprayed on these warplanes, but the war crimes that have been committed as a result of the UK government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Starmer is also accused of “hypocrisy” because the prime minister supported protesters who allegedly entered an RAF base to stop US bombings entering Iraq in 2003. Starmer was an attorney at the time.
According to Siddiqui, “I think it’s an overblown reaction from an embarrassed government,” and it’s “very knee-jerk.”
Siddiqui claimed that Palestine Action’s encounter with the ban was unheard of. The majority of the groups under international law. The majority of them act in incredibly different ways. A complete outlier would be Palestine Action. The government’s draconian strategy is to thwart protests that they don’t want to. Anyone who cares about civil liberties in the UK will be genuinely terrified.
In total, the Terrorism Act of 2000 prohibits 81 groups in the UK. They include political parties with armed wing groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as well as armed organizations like ISIS (ISIL), al-Qaeda, and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, as well as armed organizations like Tehreek-e-Taiba Pakistan.
What other ways might the potential ban be addressed?
In a news release on Monday, Amnesty International UK’s CEO, Sacha Deshmukh, stated in a statement that “the UK has an overly broad definition of terrorism, and excluding a direct-action protest group like Palestine Action could lead to unlawful interference with the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.”
He claimed that legitimate human rights protections and regular criminal justice systems were sufficient to stop direct action protesters, like those who are members of Palestine Action.
Deshmukh added that the decision to outlaw Palestine Action “presents a significant risk to the freedom of expression of many other activists who are deeply concerned about the situation of Palestinians in the wake of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
CAGE International, a nonprofit organization based in London, has also responded to the announcement. Naila Ahmed, CAGE International’s head of campaigns, stated in a statement that was made available on the company’s website that: “We stand in complete solidarity with Palestine Action in their effort to end the Zionist war machine in Gaza.” The continuation of a livestreamed genocide is now blatantly being facilitated by terrorism and proscription laws.
Sally Rooney, an Irish author known for her 2018 novel Normal People, wrote an opinion piece titled “Israel kills innocent Palestinians,” which was published by The Guardian on Sunday. Spray-painting of a plane by activists. Guerrilla propaganda by the UK government
According to Rooney, it was against the law for the activists who vandalized Brize Norton to know what they were doing. Real political resistance has always involved intentional breaking of laws, from the suffragettes to the gay rights movement to the anti-apartheid struggle.
However, prosecuting a particular individual for a particular transgression under the Terrorism Act does not equate to prosecuting them for specific acts, as I am currently doing. Supporting the group solely in words could also be a serious legal offence that could lead to a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
What comes next?
On June 30th, Cooper has stated that the British Parliament will receive a draft of a proscription order against Palestine Action.
If passed, the ban would become law, making it impossible to join or receive support for it.
The Terrorism Act provides for up to 14 years in prison and a fine.
The organization will file a legal challenge to the proposed order, Siddiqui claimed. In an X-post, Palestine Action stated that it had “informed lawyers who will fight the Home Secretary’s attempt to ban our movement.” The organization is accepting donations from supporters through an online fundraiser for legal action. As of 08: 00 GMT on Wednesday, the group had received more than 79, 000 pounds ($107, 000) out of its 100, 000-pound ($140, 000) goal.
