London, November 27, 2025 – As the three-day judicial review into the UK government's controversial ban on pro-Palestinian direct-action group Palestine Action entered its second day, protesters outside London's Royal Courts of Justice faced another wave of arrests, highlighting escalating tensions over civil liberties and the use of counter-terrorism laws. The hearing, which began on Wednesday 26 November, marks a historic first: the first time a proscribed organisation has successfully brought a judicial challenge against its own designation under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Co-founder Huda Ammori’s legal team argues that the ban is an unprecedented and disproportionate misuse of anti-terror powers that is chilling legitimate dissent against Israel’s military actions in Gaza and effectively criminalising peaceful protest.
The proscription, laid before Parliament and enacted on 5 July 2025 by then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, placed Palestine Action on the same banned list as Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Membership or any public expression of support for the group now carries a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison, a measure that critics from across the political spectrum have condemned as authoritarian overreach.
Since the ban took effect, at least 2,300 people have been arrested across Britain, often simply for holding signs that read “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. London’s Metropolitan Police have confirmed that only 254 of those arrested have so far been charged, in many cases with lesser public-order offences carrying maximum sentences of six months. Those detained include teachers, university students, pensioners, and an 83-year-old retired Anglican vicar, Sue Parfitt.
On Thursday, as proceedings continued inside the High Court on Thursday, police carried out another mass arrest operation outside, detaining approximately 140 people over six hours. Demonstrators, coordinated by the campaign group Defend Our Juries, used “floppy” resistance tactics to slow the process while holding placards declaring solidarity with Palestine Action. Counter Terrorism Policing has recorded more than 2,200 arrests under terrorism legislation since July – a higher figure than the total recorded for similar offences throughout the entire post-9/11 “war on terror” period.
Inside the courtroom, Ammori’s lawyers, led by Raza Husain KC, argued that the proscription violates Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (freedom of expression and assembly) as well as basic principles of procedural fairness under UK law. Husain told the court that Palestine Action’s strategy of disrupting arms suppliers to Israel – primarily factories owned by Elbit Systems – is part of Britain’s “honourable tradition of non-violent direct action”, explicitly comparing the group to the suffragettes. Written submissions stated: “The Suffragettes would have been liable to proscription if the current regime had been in force at the turn of the 20th century.”
The lawyers highlighted that the government’s own security assessments, including reports from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, concluded that Palestine Action does not advocate violence against persons – only, in a small minority of cases, serious damage to property. They argued that the Home Office’s internal Proscription Review Group had advised Yvette Cooper that banning the group would be “relatively novel and unprecedented” because no previous organisation had ever been proscribed solely for property damage.
The trigger for the ban appears to have been a 2 July 2025 incident at RAF Brize Norton, where activists breached the perimeter and caused an estimated £7 million of damage to two military aircraft. The government described this as part of an “escalating campaign” that threatened national security. Ammori’s team countered that, out of more than 385 actions carried out by Palestine Action since 2020, only four met the legal threshold of “serious” property damage.
Additional grounds of challenge include the Home Secretary’s alleged failure to consult the group before proscription (a breach of natural justice), disregard for her own proportionality guidance, and violation of the Public Sector Equality Duty, given the ban’s disproportionate impact on British Palestinians and the wider pro-Palestine movement.
The government, represented by Sir James Eadie KC, insists the decision was lawful, necessary, and has successfully disrupted the group without preventing legitimate Palestinian advocacy. However, the use of closed material procedures – allowing judges to consider secret intelligence evidence that neither the claimants nor the public can see – has provoked further criticism about transparency and open justice.
The composition of the three-judge panel has also attracted controversy. The case was originally assigned to Mr Justice Martin Chamberlain, who had granted permission for the judicial review and was regarded as impartial. The day before the hearing began, he was suddenly replaced – without public explanation – by Dame Victoria Sharp (President of the King’s Bench Division), Mrs Justice Steyn, and Mr Justice Swift. Critics noted that Justice Chamberlain had previously been removed from a separate case concerning UK arms exports to Israel, after which the replacement judges ruled in the government’s favour.
Huda Ammori told supporters before the hearing opened: “Today marks the beginning of our legal challenge to one of the most extreme attacks on civil liberties in recent British history – a measure condemned across the political spectrum as an affront to our democracy and an unjustifiable drain on counter-terror resources that should be focused on actual threats to the public.”
International human rights bodies have echoed these concerns. The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, has criticised the UK for imposing “excessive limits on freedom of assembly and expression”, while UN experts and Amnesty International have called the proscription disproportionate. Liberty and Amnesty International UK, granted formal intervener status in the case, have urged the court to quash the ban.
Founded in 2020, Palestine Action emerged from frustration with conventional lobbying and boycott campaigns that activists felt had failed to halt UK complicity in Israel’s occupation and military operations. The group has carried out hundreds of non-violent occupations, blockades, and disruptions targeting British factories and offices linked to Israeli arms manufacturers.
As the hearing moves into its final scheduled day on Friday – with a possible additional day to be fixed later – the outcome carries implications far beyond one organisation. Success for the claimants could lead to the ban being overturned, thousands of pending cases being dropped, and a significant strengthening of protest rights under the European Convention. A defeat, conversely, risks entrenching a precedent that allows future governments to proscribe non-violent direct-action groups simply for causing economic disruption.
Outside the Royal Courts of Justice, the chants of “Free, free Palestine” continued long into the evening, an audible reminder that the battle over Britain’s protest laws is being fought on the streets as well as in the courtroom.
