The British direct motion activist group Palestine Motion is now banned in the UK after a Excessive Courtroom choose refused to grant an software for interim reduction, following the passing of a vote in Parliament that proscribed the group as a terrorist group.
That implies that expressing assist for the group has itself grow to be a legal offense, theoretically punishable by as much as 14 years in jail. An 83-year-old vicar was one in all many people arrested at protests in assist of the now-proscribed group.
The British direct motion activist group Palestine Motion is now banned in the UK after a Excessive Courtroom choose refused to grant an software for interim reduction, following the passing of a vote in Parliament that proscribed the group as a terrorist group.
That implies that expressing assist for the group has itself grow to be a legal offense, theoretically punishable by as much as 14 years in jail. An 83-year-old vicar was one in all many people arrested at protests in assist of the now-proscribed group.
I’m a Center Jap struggle correspondent and political commentator who has an extended historical past of supporting the growth of proscription in the UK. Nonetheless, I personally regard the declare that this determination is within the public curiosity as absurd and risible.
Palestine Motion isn’t now, nor has it ever been, a terrorist group. Its proscription by the Labour Occasion authorities demonstrates a complete failure to deal appropriately with the issue posed by the group. Watering down the definition of terrorism may have lasting penalties for regulation enforcement, counterterrorism, and nationwide safety.
To be clear, this isn’t a protection of Palestine Motion nor its strategies, nor would I agree with pundits who’ve argued that Palestine Motion is a strictly “non-violent” protest group. Law enforcement officials had been assaulted with sledgehammers and different weapons through the motion that the now-proscribed group undertook in Bristol in August 2024.
A newer motion undertaken by the group in late June at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, throughout which members broke into the army airfield and prompted hundreds of thousands of kilos price of harm to 2 Voyager plane, was a serious embarrassment for the Royal Air Drive and the British authorities. Residence Secretary Yvette Cooper was proper to level out that these actions “meet the edge set out within the statutory exams established beneath the Terrorism Act 2000” in that they signify a “threat.” The query is whether or not that threat is critical sufficient to advantage proscription.
Using the nuclear choice of proscription on this occasion is a mistake. Not each group banned beneath the Terrorism Act in British regulation must be as harmful as al Qaeda or the Islamic State, or as excessive as home terrorist organizations comparable to Nationwide Motion. Palestine Motion, regardless of its legal actions, nonetheless falls effectively in need of the definition of terrorism because it exists in British regulation.
The brink for banning a gaggle solely has beforehand been excessive. Earlier British governments have agonized over proscription and the justifications for it, with David Cameron failing to ban the extremist, although nonviolent, Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir throughout his time as prime minister regardless of his threats to take action, though the group was ultimately proscribed in 2024. It took many years to lastly proscribe Hezbollah, and the British state nonetheless has not proscribed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the department of the Iranian Armed Forces that coordinates terrorism all through the Center East and has been linked to a number of foiled terrorist plots in Britain which might be going by way of the courts.
Palestine Motion’s campaigns predate the present Israel-Hamas battle in Gaza. The group dates again to 2020, when a gaggle focused Elbit Methods, an Israeli army know-how contractor that operates 16 totally different websites throughout the UK with an export license granted by the British authorities.
Any marketing campaign must be judged on its deserves, and with out endorsing Palestine Motion’s violence towards cops or assaults on Israeli charities, the federal government ought to acknowledge that anger towards the Israeli army and British assist for it’s each widespread and pushed by very totally different motivations than terrorism.
A helpful comparability right here is the environmental group Simply Cease Oil, which often engaged in legal injury within the pursuit of objectives that the broader British public sympathizes with. No quantity of prosecution or menace of prosecution of Simply Cease Oil’s activists stopped them from direct motion, however the UK’s determination to finish new oil and gasoline licenses within the North Sea did.
The British state shouldn’t acquiesce to the calls for of any random activist group, however the Labour authorities claims to be dedicated to each a inexperienced agenda and opposing Israel’s actions within the occupied Palestinian territories. There are substantial coverage proposals that the federal government might enact tomorrow—comparable to banning export licenses for Israeli army contractors—that will render Palestine Motion out of date in a single day with out risking the dilution of British counterterrorism laws. One of many first acts that the Labour authorities undertook close to overseas coverage was the suspension of 30 arms licenses to Israel, a serious break with the Conservative Occasion’s coverage of overt assist for Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza.
As a result of South Africa’s case accusing Israel of the crime of genocide continues to be ongoing on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice, the authorized scrutiny behind the British state’s actions with regard to its relationship with Israel is just going to accentuate. The federal government’s place following its final arms export assessment doesn’t go far sufficient to defend it from prices of actively aiding Israeli army atrocities.
Palestine Motion isn’t an admirable group. Whereas Syrian paramedics and medical services had been being focused in a scientific Russian and regime bombing marketing campaign that included the usage of chemical weapons, Huda Ammori—the founding father of Palestine Motion—was engaged in conspiracy theories parroting Russian conspiracy theories about Syrian rescue staff as they had been being systematically focused in Russian air strikes. These aren’t individuals who ought to be capable of declare the ethical excessive floor over a Labour authorities.
However slightly than prosecuting particular person activists for legal injury or different established prices, the federal government has successfully handed Palestine Motion an enormous ethical victory by way of excessive measures. Each well-meaning pensioner who faces a draconian penalty for holding up an indication makes a mockery of not simply justice, but additionally of the definition of terrorism itself.
Will probably be onerous for the federal government to make a much-needed U-turn on this motion. The authorized challenges might ultimately provide it a means out with grace. However that is an ignominious chapter for the younger Labour authorities, and one which will set a precedent to focus on different direct motion protest teams. That may undermine the very critical want for strong counterterrorist laws in the UK. Palestine Motion is solely not in the identical basket as teams comparable to Hezbollah which have actively sought the loss of life of British residents.
However even when it foolishly insists on retaining Palestine Motion on this record, the U.Okay. authorities can nonetheless take away the drivers of legal motion. By reversing the remaining Israeli arms export licenses and suspending the actions of teams comparable to Elbit Methods in the UK, Labour can defang public anger—and forestall itself from being additional complicit in Israeli army atrocities in Gaza, the West Financial institution, and the broader Center East.
