The UK Court of Appeal is expected to decide on Monday whether the British government was right to outlaw the activist group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation.
Palestine Action was formally banned by the United Kingdom last July. A London court ruled earlier this month that four activists convicted of criminal damage at a British facility owned by an Israeli arms group would be sentenced on the basis that their actions had a “terrorist connection.”
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The banning of Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization has been challenged before the High Court, which ruled in February that the ban was illegal. The government then appealed that decision.
What is Palestine Action and why was it banned?
Palestine Action is a British protest group founded six years ago and describes itself as a movement “committed to ending global participation in Israel's apartheid and genocidal regime.”
It says it uses “disruptive tactics” to attack “corporate enablers” and companies involved in manufacturing weapons for Israel, such as the Israeli group Elbit Systems, the Italian aerospace company Leonardo, the French multinational Thales and Teledyne of the United States. The group has targeted British facilities linked to those companies.
In total, British police have said the group's action has resulted in millions of pounds in criminal damage.
Palestine Action protests include:
- In 2021, members protested for six days on the roof of Elbit Systems subsidiary UAV Tactical Systems in Leicester, until some were arrested by police.
- In 2022, the group broke into a Thales equipment factory in Glasgow, causing more than £1 million ($1.3 million) worth of damage to weapons.
- In 2024, ten months into Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian Action activists stormed an Elbit Systems facility in the United Kingdom near Bristol, south-west England. causing another million pounds of damage.
- On 20 June 2025, Palestine Action activists stormed the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and sprayed two military aircraft with red paint.
Days after the attack on Brize Norton, MPs voted to ban the group. That classified Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization, placing it in the same category as armed groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
Critics condemned the vote, arguing that while the group's members have caused property damage, they have not committed violent acts that amount to terrorism.
More than 130 high-profile public figures have spoken out against the ban.
In the three months after the ban, at least 1,600 arrests were made related to support for Palestine Action.
What is Monday's Court of Appeal ruling about?
Last August, Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori challenged the government's ban in the High Court. In November, the High Court heard a three-day judicial review.
In February, the High Court ruled that the government's ban on “terrorist groups” was unlawful and disproportionate.
The government immediately said it would appeal. “I am disappointed by the court's decision and do not agree with the idea that banning this terrorist organization is disproportionate,” said Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood.
“I intend to challenge this ruling in the Court of Appeal.”
Although the High Court found the ban illegal, the ban remains in force, pending the outcome of the government's appeal to the Court of Appeal on Monday.
What is the broader context?
Four activists from the Palestinian Action group were convicted as “terrorists” on Friday, even though most of them were not found guilty of criminal damage by a jury until May.
Dozens of protesters were arrested outside Woolwich Crown Court in London ahead of the sentencing of four members of the group – Charlotte Head, 30, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, and Fatema Zainab Rajwani, 21 – for causing criminal damage to the Elbit Systems site in Filton, near Bristol, in the west of England.
Corner was also found guilty of striking a police officer with a sledgehammer and convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
While the convictions are for criminal damage, the court had leeway to decide whether his actions were related to “terrorism,” which carries harsher penalties.
Judge Jeremy Johnson handed sentences of between five and eight years to the four defendants after calling their August 2024 raid on the Elbit Systems site in Bristol a “terrorist act.”
That their sentences are linked to “terrorism” means that activists will have to serve all their sentences in prison, unless they have already served at least two-thirds of their sentences and a parole board decides they can be released.
Samuel was sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison, Charlotte was sentenced to five years, along with Leona, while Fatema was ordered to serve four years and eight months in prison.
They will be registered as “terrorists” for the rest of their lives, will be required to register new mobile devices, email addresses and bank accounts with the police throughout their lives, and will face being returned to prison if they breach the conditions of their license or re-offend.
Amnesty International said the sentence was “completely disproportionate.”
The organisation's UK chief executive, Kerry Moscogiuri, said: “Today's sentencing hearing risks marking a new low in the ongoing crackdown on protests across the UK. Criminal harm has never before been treated as terrorism within the UK justice system, and it is completely disproportionate to do so because the crime occurred at a protest.”
“The use of anti-terrorism laws to suppress direct action protesters sets a dangerous precedent for our fundamental rights in this country and must come to an end.”
On Wednesday, ahead of the sentencing, a group of more than 50 lawyers and law professors published an open letter denouncing possible plans to sentence the four Palestine Action members as terrorists.
The letter highlights that property damage has been a recurring feature of protest campaigns, from the suffragettes who fought for women to have the right to vote a century ago, to the modern environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion.
“Never before has it even been suggested that those who take such actions should be treated as terrorists. Blurring the distinction between principled direct action and terrorism is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes,” the open letter states.
The letter has been signed by law professors from universities in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway and Canada, as well as dozens of practicing lawyers and solicitors.
