[News] Ban on Palestine Action to take effect after legal challenge fails

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theguardian.com
<https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/04/ban-on-palestine-action-to-take-effect-after-legal-challenge-fails>
Ban on Palestine Action to take effect after legal challenge fails
Haroon Siddique
July 4, 2025
------------------------------

Being a member of, or showing support for, Palestine Action will be a
criminal offence from Saturday after a last-minute legal challenge to
suspend the group’s proscription under anti-terrorism laws failed.
[image: Huda Ammori]
Huda Ammori of Palestine Action. Photograph: Abdullah Bailey

A ban on Palestine Action, which uses direct action to mainly target
Israeli weapons factories in the UK and their supply chain, was voted
through by parliament
<https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/02/uk-mps-vote-to-proscribe-palestine-action-as-terrorist-group>
this week but lawyers acting for its co-founder Huda Ammori had sought to
prevent it taking effect.

After a hearing at the high court on Friday, however, Mr Justice
Chamberlain declined to grant her application
<https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/ammori-v-secretary-of-state-for-the-home-department/>
for interim relief. Ammori said: “The home secretary is rushing through the
implementation of the proscription at midnight tonight despite the fact
that our legal challenge is ongoing and that she has been completely
unclear about how it will be enforced, leaving the public in the dark about
their rights to free speech and expression after midnight tonight when this
proscription comes into effect.”

Chamberlain said: “I have concluded that the harm which would ensue if
interim relief is refused but the claim later succeeds is insufficient to
outweigh the strong public interest in maintaining the order in force.”

Ammori sought permission to appeal against Chamberlain’s decision in an 8pm
hearing that lasted approximately one hour at the court of appeal on Friday
night, in an attempt to prevent the ban coming into force. But at about
10.25pm – less than two hours before it was due to take effect – the three
judges, led by the lady chief justice, Sue Carr, refused permission.

It means Palestine Action will become the first direct action protest group
to be banned under the Terrorism Act, placing it in the same category as
Islamic State, al-Qaida and the far-right group National Action.

Raza Husain KC, representing Ammori, described the proscription decision in
the hearing before Chamberlain, as “an ill-considered, discriminatory and
authoritarian abuse of statutory power”. He said it was “absurd” to label a
civil disobedience direct action protest group that does not advocate
violence as a terrorist organisation.

“The main target has been stopping Elbit Systems … which markets itself as
the backbone of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” said Husain. “As my
client says: ‘The aim of terrorism is to take lives and hurt people, that’s
the opposite of what we do.’”

He said before making the decision the government had engaged with the
Israeli government, Elbit Systems
<https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/20/israeli-embassy-officials-attempted-to-influence-uk-court-cases-documents-suggest>
and pro-Israeli lobby groups
<https://x.com/WeBelieveIsrael/status/1932019636473598380>, while Palestine
Action and other pro-Palestine groups were not consulted.

Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC, also representing Ammori, said what was going on in
Gaza <https://www.theguardian.com/world/gaza> was “an annihilation, it is a
genocide” and Palestine Action was “seeking to disrupt and prevent” UK
complicity in it.

Ben Watson KC, representing the home secretary, focused on the proscription
procedure in his submissions. “All of these issues, all of that evidence is
supposed to go to the secretaries of state… it’s only after that process,
after the secretary of state has had a chance to consider … then the matter
goes before Poac [the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission].”

He said only then could the case go to the court of appeal and then,
potentially, the supreme court.

Watson said Palestine Action’s activities met the statutory test for
proscription and that if the ban took effect but the group subsequently won
a judicial review against proscription it would not cause “irreparable
harm” to it.

He told the court that if a temporary block was granted, it would be a
“serious disfigurement of the statutory regime”.

The protest group Defend Our Juries wrote to the Met police commissioner,
Mark Rowley
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c-JrTDNpXMH9OsFVuGUuvtUbgbg9Gcrad4TNy-5njEg/edit?tab=t.0>,
on Friday to tell him that it “may be committing offences under the
Terrorism Act” in Parliament Square from 1pm on Saturday. It said
non-violent protesters would hold signs saying: “I oppose genocide. I
support Palestine Action.” The letter said that they “refuse to be
bystanders to what’s happening to the people of Palestine, who are bombed,
starved and gunned down as they queue for food”.

Several hundred protesters gathered, waving Palestinian flags and carrying
signs saying “Free Palestine” and “We are all Palestine Action” outside the
Royal Courts of Justice.

UN experts
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/un-experts-urge-united-kingdom-not-misuse-terrorism-laws-against-protest>,
civil liberties groups, cultural figures
<https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2025/06/30/paul-weller-tilda-swinton-stop-the-proscription-of-palestine-action/>
and hundreds of lawyers
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/01/yvette-cooper-plan-ban-palestine-action-un-experts-lawyers>
have condemned the ban as draconian and said it sets a dangerous precedent
by conflating protest with terrorism.

Another hearing is scheduled for 21 July when Palestine Action will apply
for permission for a judicial review to quash the order. In the meantime,
and unless the judicial review is successful, membership of, or inviting
support for, the group will carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
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