The UK Home Secretary recently proscribed the group Palestine Action under terrorism legislation on the basis that it has carried out ‘a series of violent attacks against national security targets’. This is the first time a direct-action protest group has been proscribed as terrorist in the UK. 

A day of demonstrations in London in support of the group resulted in over 500 arrests, mainly for displaying placards in support of Palestine Action at Westminster's Parliament Square.

The Palestine Action members who entered the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton in June this year – which appears to have sparked proscription - have been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage after paint was sprayed on two jets, causing damage estimated to be in the millions. They are also being charged with ‘conspiracy to enter a prohibited place ... for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK’, which carries a maximum 14-year sentence. 

Palestine Action looks oddly out of place on a government website listing ‘proscribed international terrorist groups’. It is described as ‘a pro-Palestinian group with the stated aim to support Palestinian sovereignty by using direct criminal action tactics to halt the sale and export of military equipment to Israel’. Palestine Action describes its purpose as ‘preventing military targets in the UK from facilitating gross abuses of international law’. Neither side disputes that Palestine Action aims to disrupt the supply of weapons to Israel, but the government ignores that the organisation’s focus is the implementation of international law.

‘For Palestine Action to be proscribed primarily for their protests that cause damage to property (and property that falls squarely within the target of their protest, not random or untargeted public infrastructure, for example) is a major and dangerous shift in the law,’ says Martha Spurrier, a human rights barrister and former Director of the advocacy group Liberty. 

Toby Cadman, Member of the IBA War Crimes Committee Advisory Board, thinks that proscription is being used ‘...as a blunt instrument to silence certain voices on Palestine at a moment when public opinion and government policy are sharply at odds.’ A recent YouGov poll found that 55 per cent oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered two rulings obliging governments, including the UK, to act to prevent the ‘plausible’ risk of genocide in Gaza and to refrain from providing economic or political support to the Israel occupation. The UK government suspended 30 arms export licences to Israel, sanctioned two far-right extremist Israeli government ministers, and suspended talks to upgrade trade negotiations, trade and military cooperation with Israel continues. But, the UK continues to supply parts for F-35 jets used by Israel to bomb Gaza. 

In July 2025, a group of NGOs challenged the UK government on its failure to implement the ICJ rulings, calling for an independent public inquiry to ‘confirm whether the UK has contributed to any violations of international humanitarian law through economic or political cooperation with the Israeli government since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases.’ 

Under UK law, serious damage to property absent any intent to cause harm to people can be deemed terrorism. But Susan Kemp, Member of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute Council, describes the UK government’s proscription as an ‘exaggerated response’. She explains that the ‘...scale of the property damage that is envisaged as causing terror among civilians is of a different order …examples include an aerial bombardment or burning homes, businesses, energy and water supplies or crops after the population had vacated.’ 

And individuals can be charged with terrorist offences without the need to proscribe an entire organisation and its supporters. Cadman says that broadening terrorism powers ‘to silence disruptive but non-lethal protest movements’ is an ‘alarming rationale in a democracy’. In his view the proscription ‘effectively redefines acts of protest and civil disobedience as security threats, which shifts the debate from politics to policing’. 

Pictures of elderly protestors being led away by police in handcuffs illustrate an extraordinary situation caused by this proscription. Retirees, including a magistrate, a teacher and a priest, are among hundreds of people arrested so far on suspicion of committing terrorist offences. Police arrested some for holding banners supporting Palestine Action, but others for simply protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza or supporting Palestinian rights generally. 

Kemp highlights the problem of such inconsistencies: ‘...on the ground, a protestor’s immediate fate depends on the officer’s subjective idea of what a Palestine Action supporter looks like or how they behave.’ Those arrested risk anything from six months to 14 years in prison. Although not all may be charged, as Kemp says ‘...the initial damage is done and the chilling effect on others in society will be significant.’

Palestine Action has been granted permission for judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision, the judge determining that ‘the existence of a large category of cases that are close to the line demonstrates that the proscription order is likely to have a significant deterrent effect on legitimate speech.’ He also said: ‘This shows that the proscription order is likely to give rise to a substantial interference with rights guaranteed by the common law and by Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights’, which protect the right to free speech and peaceful assembly. 

The divergence from international norms was highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights who described the UK government’s proscription of Palestine Action as being ‘...out of step with comparable liberal democracies’, adding: ‘Protest movements claiming to defend human rights, that are an irritant to property rights or affect certain national security interests…are not typically treated as “terrorist”, even where they could technically come within a national terrorism definition.’

Kemp believes the government’s decision not only risks ‘...violating basic human rights protections that the UK claim to uphold, but also further damaging the standing of the UK internationally.’ 

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