The UK stated on June 23 that it will ban a pro-Palestinian marketing campaign group referred to as Palestine Motion beneath anti-terrorism legal guidelines. This might put the organisation on par with armed teams like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) within the UK, making it a felony offence to be a part of Palestine Motion.
The federal government’s announcement has prompted criticism from human rights organisations and triggered protests. On Tuesday, 13 individuals have been arrested and 7 have been charged after protesters in London clashed with Metropolitan Cops. The costs included assaulting emergency staff and a racially aggravated offence.
What’s Palestine Motion?
Palestine Motion describes itself as a motion “dedicated to ending world participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”. The group was launched in July 2020.
The group says it seeks to make use of “disruptive ways” to focus on “company enablers” and firms concerned in weapons manufacture for Israel, reminiscent of Israel-based Elbit Methods, Italian aerospace firm Leonardo, French multinational Thales and United States firm Teledyne. The group has focused British services linked to those corporations.
“Palestine Motion is a direct motion group who’ve majoritively centered on weapons factories which can be working on British soil and are complicit within the present genocide in Gaza, but in addition within the longer-term type of oppression of the Palestinian individuals,” Manaal Siddiqui, a spokesperson for Palestine Motion, advised Al Jazeera.
In 2022, the group broke right into a Thales tools manufacturing facility in Glasgow, inflicting injury to weapons price greater than 1 million kilos ($1.4m).
In 2021, members of Palestine Motion protested on the rooftop of Elbit Methods’ subsidiary UAV Tactical Methods in Leicester for six days, till a variety of them have been arrested by the police.
Why is the UK banning Palestine Motion?
Dwelling Secretary Yvette Cooper stated in a statement on Monday that she had determined to proscribe the group beneath the Terrorism Act 2000.
Cooper’s assertion got here days after June 20, when some Palestine Motion activists broke into RAF Brize Norton, the most important station of the Royal Air Drive in Oxfordshire, and sprayed two army planes with pink paint.
In essentially the most high-profile transfer made by the group to this point, the activists sprayed pink paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager plane, used for air-to-air refuelling, and broken them with crowbars.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the incident in an X put up the identical day. “The act of vandalism dedicated at RAF Brize Norton is disgraceful,” he wrote.
The police have stated the Palestine Motion activists’ motion resulted in thousands and thousands of kilos of felony injury.
“The disgraceful assault on Brize Norton within the early hours of the morning on Friday 20 June is the most recent in an extended historical past of unacceptable felony injury dedicated by Palestine Motion,” Cooper stated in her Monday assertion.
Siddiqui, nevertheless, stated Brize Norton shops plane “that are going for use around the globe, however notably in Gaza”. She added that they’ve additionally been utilized in Syria and Yemen.
Israel’s conflict in Gaza, which started on October 7, 2023, has killed greater than 56,000 Palestinians.
“These plane can be utilized to refuel and have been used to refuel Israeli fighter jets,” Siddiqui stated, including that planes from Brize Norton go to the British air drive base in Cyprus, from the place they’re “dispatched on spy missions and that intelligence is shared with the Israeli authorities and the Israeli air forces”.
Final 12 months, the British air drive stated it participated in large-scale help airdrops to Gaza. The air drive stated on April 9, 2024, it was concerned in airdropping tons of of tonnes of help.
“The quantity of help being dropped is an absolute drop within the ocean,” Siddiqui stated, including that the UN says about 2,300 tonnes of help are required to satisfy Gaza’s every day wants.
The act of vandalism dedicated at RAF Brize Norton is disgraceful.
Our Armed Forces signify the perfect of Britain and put their lives on the road for us every single day.
It’s our accountability to assist those that defend us.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 20, 2025
How has Palestine Motion reacted to the ban menace?
In an announcement posted on its X profile on Tuesday, Palestine Motion stated: “The true crime right here will not be pink paint being sprayed on these warplanes, however the conflict crimes which were enabled with these planes due to the UK authorities’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”
The assertion additionally accuses Starmer of “hypocrisy” for the reason that PM, again in 2003, supported protesters who broke into an RAF base to cease US bombers heading to Iraq. On the time, Starmer was a lawyer.
“I believe it’s a really knee-jerk response from an embarrassed authorities, and it’s an overblown response,” Siddiqui stated.
Siddiqui stated it was unprecedented for Palestine Motion to face the ban. “The vast majority of the proscribed teams are worldwide. The vast majority of them take actions in very, very alternative ways. Palestine Motion can be a whole outlier. It’s a Draconian method for the federal government to stifle protests that they simply don’t like. It’s genuinely terrifying for anybody who cares about civil liberties within the UK.”
In all, 81 teams are proscribed within the UK beneath the Terrorism Act 2000. They embody political actions with armed wings, like Hamas and Hezbollah, in addition to armed teams like ISIS (ISIL), al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan.
What are different reactions to the attainable ban?
On Monday, Sacha Deshmukh, chief govt of Amnesty Worldwide UK, stated in a information launch: “The UK has a very broad definition of terrorism and proscribing a direct-action protest group like Palestine Motion dangers an illegal interference with the basic rights of freedom of expression, affiliation and peaceable meeting.”
He stated common felony regulation and acceptable human rights protections have been satisfactory to reply to direct motion protesters reminiscent of these affiliated with Palestine Motion.
Deshmukh added that the choice to ban Palestine Motion dangers “the free speech rights of many different activists who’re deeply involved concerning the plight of Palestinians within the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza”.
London-based advocacy organisation CAGE Worldwide has additionally reacted to the announcement. In an announcement revealed on its web site, Naila Ahmed, head of campaigns at CAGE Worldwide, stated: “We stand in absolute solidarity with Palestine Motion of their marketing campaign to dismantle the Zionist conflict machine and produce an finish to the genocide in Gaza. Terrorism and proscription legal guidelines are actually overtly enabling the continuation of a livestreamed genocide.”
Irish creator Sally Rooney, identified for books together with her 2018 novel Regular Individuals, wrote an opinion piece revealed by The Guardian on Sunday titled “Israel kills harmless Palestinians. Activists spray-paint a aircraft. Guess which the UK authorities calls terrorism.”
Rooney wrote that the activists who vandalised Brize Norton knew what they have been doing was unlawful. “From the suffragettes to the homosexual rights motion to the anti-apartheid wrestle, real political resistance has all the time concerned intentional law-breaking.
“However proscribing a whole organisation beneath the Terrorism Act will not be the identical factor as prosecuting explicit people for particular transgressions … even supporting the group purely in phrases – as I’m doing now – might additionally represent a severe authorized offence, punishable with a sentence of as much as 14 years in jail.”
What’s subsequent?
Cooper has stated a draft of a proscription order in opposition to Palestine Motion shall be introduced to the British Parliament on June 30.
If handed, the ban would turn out to be regulation, making it unlawful to turn out to be a member of the group or to ask assist for it.
Based on the Terrorism Act, the penalties embody as much as 14 years in jail and a wonderful.
Siddiqui stated the group would problem the proposed order legally. Palestine Motion stated in an X put up that the group had “instructed legal professionals who will battle in opposition to the Dwelling Secretary’s try to ban our motion”. The group has created a web based fundraiser for authorized motion, accepting donations from supporters. As of 08:00 GMT on Wednesday, the group had acquired greater than 79,000 kilos ($107,000) out of its 100,000-pound ($140,000) objective.
“At this level, Palestine Motion will not be but a banned organisation and we are going to proceed to be Palestine Motion. I believe this can be very essential for all individuals who take care of civil liberties to be preventing in opposition to such acts,” Siddiqui stated.
