In June 2025, the UK government banned the UK-based group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under the Terrorism Act 2000. This was a political rather than a security decision and represents an unprecedented expansion of the criminalization of Palestinian solidarity in the UK. Members of Palestine Action engage in non-violent direct action aimed at stopping British complicity in the Gaza genocide, targeting facilities linked to the Israeli arms industry operating in the UK, including Elbit Systems sites and elements of the UK’s military infrastructure.
Rather than confronting its actions, the government has sought to divert attention from the central issue: Britain’s role in the Gaza massacre. Throughout Israel’s attack on Gaza, the UK has continued to provide political and diplomatic support, supplying critical parts for F-35 fighter jets and conducting R1 surveillance flights over Gaza. Taken together, these actions mean that the British government is not just complicit in the violence, but is substantially involved in the violence itself.
At the same time, the UK is trying to thwart international accountability. Attempted to interfere with proceedings at the International Criminal Court (an act that could constitute a crime under Article 70(1) of the ICC Statute) by intimidating the ICC Prosecutor and creating procedural obstacles aimed at delaying or preventing the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Rather than reevaluating policies that expose them to legal and moral liability, governments antagonize those who cling to their professed values, values that are easily invoked when geopolitically expedient, as in Ukraine and Greenland.
Anti-terrorism laws justify political imprisonment
The persecution of individuals for political reasons through the law is by no means new. As early as 399 B.C., Socrates was tried in Athens for “impiety,” “recognizing no god recognized by the state,” and “corrupting the youth,” and the law itself served as a means of repression, and he was executed.
Today, Russia’s crackdown on dissent, carried out through formally legal means, is one of the most widely criticized contemporary examples of political imprisonment, and is routinely condemned by Western governments, including the United Kingdom.
Attempts to define and legally operationalize the concept of political imprisonment have long faced resistance. Although there is no consensus on what constitutes a ‘political prisoner’ or ‘prisoner of conscience’, the standards established by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), of which the UK is a member, provide clear and authoritative guidance.
“a. The detention is imposed in violation of one of the fundamental guarantees set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols (ECHR), in particular freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and information, freedom of assembly and association.
b. The detention is imposed for purely political reasons, unrelated to any crime.
c. Politically motivated cases where the length or conditions of detention are clearly disproportionate to the crime for which the person has been convicted or is accused.
d. Detained in a politically motivated manner that discriminates against others. or
e. The detention is the result of a clearly unfair procedure and this appears to be linked to political motives on the part of the authorities. ” (SG/Inf(2001)34, para. 10).
These standards have a direct bearing on Britain’s treatment of Palestinian actions. The British government is complicit in Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestine, including through its illegal occupation, apartheid system and role in the Gaza massacre, and Palestine Action directly challenges this complicity. Although public order and civil disobedience laws previously failed to curb this activity, the state has escalated to the point of introducing exceptional anti-terrorism laws.
Since then, the government has resorted to terrorism laws to preemptively criminalize activists, punishing them with up to 14 years in prison, a level of punishment grossly disproportionate to non-violent direct action. This imbalance and choice of law suggests political motives.
The application of the Terrorism Act 2000 to non-violent direct action deprives activists of normal legal protections and exposes them to an exceptional penal regime, including extended pre-trial detention, increased surveillance powers, restrictions on association and expression, and significantly increased sentences. Such measures are typically limited to acts involving large-scale violence and do not apply to protests aimed at preventing harm.
Under PACE standards, detention can be considered political if the punishment is clearly disproportionate, or if the legal process is unfair and politically motivated. Here, nonviolent activism faces the possibility of long-term imprisonment, alongside the reputational destruction of terrorist designation. This combination satisfies multiple indicators of political imprisonment, especially criteria (c) and (e).
The use of anti-terrorism laws in this context does more than simply criminalize acts. It redefines dissent itself as a security threat, preempts fair judgment, and conditions the public to accept extraordinary punishment for ordinary political opposition.
big picture
In penology, penal systems can serve several recognized purposes, including desertification and retribution, neutralization, and deterrence. What is happening in the UK does not fit into any of these objectives. Rather, the penal system has been introduced to expand administrative power and suppress political opposition, deviating from the purpose of the penal system in a liberal democracy.
The UK is complicit in serious breaches of international law and is not just failing to meet its international law obligations, it is actively breaching them. Some British citizens concerned with justice, international law and human rights intervened peacefully to challenge the wrongdoing of their government. The state’s response has been to criminalize dissent while presenting repression as democratic self-defense.
To be clear, banning Palestinian action as a terrorist organization is not an isolated act. This is part of a broader British complicity in Israeli oppression and genocide, and it works at home to silence those who seek to disrupt that complicity.
This is not the first attempt to use the rule of law in Britain to support Israeli policy in Palestine. The introduction of the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism was also an attempt to control and intimidate the opposition through legal means. By weaponizing anti-terrorism laws, the British government has taken a further step towards reducing the space for dissent.
The exceptional selectivity of legal means and the disparity between the chosen punishment regime cannot be justified when compared to the act in question, nonviolent activism aimed at forcing governments to cease violence and uphold the international legal obligations they claim to uphold. Those who participate in violence brand non-violent people as terrorists.
Finally, it is astonishing that, for decades, Britain has continued to ignore its own historical responsibilities towards the Palestinian people. Britain imposed a mandate on Palestine by force, ruled the territory while systematically giving privileges to the interests of its colonies and settlers, and then abandoned its obligations and unilaterally withdrew. This withdrawal was crucial in creating the conditions for the Nakba to unfold, in violation of the responsibilities Britain had assumed under the Mandate.
These obligations included a commitment made in the 1939 White Paper to establish a Palestinian state for all its people within ten years, a promise that was never kept. After sowing suffering for the Palestinian people, Britain withdrew from Palestine without securing political self-determination for the indigenous peoples, leaving behind a legacy of dispossession that continues to shape the present.
More than a century after the mandate, Palestinians, supported by allies around the world, are still risking everything to defend human values and the principles of international law. In contrast, the British state chose evasion over responsibility, repression over reckoning.
Is there any hope?
Hope lies in refusing to normalize this moment. By challenging the ban on Palestinian action, activists are not only resisting British complicity in Israeli crimes, but also defending the very space for dissent. This fight is not just about overturning a single decision, but about preventing the erosion of democratic boundaries through abuse of the law. In the UK, there is currently a parallel struggle between defending democracy and countering complicity in Israeli atrocities.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
