The high court was wrong to rule that the ban on Palestine Action under terrorism legislation was unlawful, the court of appeal ruled Monday morning.
Palestine Action was proscribed under terrorism laws last year, but after a legal challenge by the group’s co-founder, London’s high court in February deemed the government’s designation unlawful. It remained proscribed, pending the government’s appeal.
Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, the most senior judge in England and Wales, said the five-person strong panel had “concluded that the proscription decision struck a fair balance.”
She described the group as “a covert organization operating with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy the property of third parties” and said “at no stage has Palestine Action suggested that its terrorist activities were either a mistake or an aberration.”
Due to the proscription remaining in place, it is still an offense to support, fund, or belong to Palestine Action.
Huda Ammori, who co-founded Palestine Action in 2020 and brought the appeal over the designation to the high court earlier this year, issued a defiant statement in response to the court ruling.
She vowed to “not stop fighting for the ban to be lifted” and for the “end of the use of terror legislation against us.”
On Friday, four Palestine Action activists were jailed over causing £1.2m of damage at the U.K. site of Elbit Systems, an Israel-based defense firm, in August 2024.
They had been convicted of criminal damage during a retrial in May and were sentenced to a total of over 20 years, as the judge issued longer terms after determining there was a “terrorism connection.”
The ruling sparked debate among U.K. lawmakers, with Labour MP John McDonnell referring to the scale of the sentences as “truly shocking.”
“To impose years of imprisonment for protesting to save lives in Gaza is unjust,” he argued. “Especially sentencing on terrorist grounds they were never convicted of by a jury.”
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