Palestine Action has lost a last-ditch High Court bid to avoid being banned as a terrorist organisation by the Labour government.
The group’s co-founder Huda Ammori asked a judge to step in to thwart the Home Office’s plan under Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to proscribe the group under the Terrorism Act 2000.
She called the idea “authoritarian” and argued it would leave supporters open to unfair criminal convictions, as well as destroying her own advocacy for the Palestinian cause.
But Mr Justice Chamberlain delivered his ruling in Friday afternoon, refusing to implement a temporary ban.
The court decision paves the way for Ms Cooper to sign the proscription order this weekend, though there is still the possibility of a final legal challenge.
A full hearing to determine the future of the ban is set for later this month.
The judge said Palestine Action has “at least one serious issue” that it could argue - that a ban would interfere with rights protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR.
But he concluded the “harm which would ensue... is insufficient to outweigh the public interest in maintaining the order in force”.
The judge refused to grant leave to appeal to Palestine Action, but lawyers on behalf of the group brought their case to the Court of Appeal in a bid to challenge the decision at a hearing late on Friday evening.
At a short, urgent preliminary appeal hearing, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr asked Raza Husain KC, representing Ms Ammori: "If this matter is going ahead, you need a decision from us by then, do you?"
Mr Husain replied: "Indeed." Baroness Carr, sitting with Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Edis, said the hearing would last an hour, refusing a bid to extend it to 90 minutes.
She said: "We're less than five hours away, we've got to make our minds up on what we've got."
The head of the judiciary in England and Wales added: "Both sides, if there was any prospect of an appeal, ought to have had all of these matters well in hand, if you were going to come to the Court of Appeal and ask for a decision by midnight.
"We are here now. We will do our best."
The High Court hearing was accompanied by a day-long protest along The Strand by pro-Palestine supporters. Hundreds of people joined the demo, watched by scores of Metropolitan Police officers.
Opening the application for an interim block on proscription, Raza Husain KC said the ban would be “the first time in history a direct action civil disobedience group which does not advocate for violence has been sought to be proscribed as terrorist.”
He asked the judge to stop the ban taking effect until July 21, when a full challenge to proscription is due to be heard.
“This is an ill-considered, discriminatory, authoritarian abuse of statutory powers”, he said.
“You may not agree with what Palestine action does, or you may think – as my client did – that other means of protest has been ineffectual, and consequently called for forms of more direct action.”
He said opposition to proscription had come from groups around the world, including in South Africa from those who fought against Apartheid who say Palestine Action is using “remarkably similar” methods.
“The idea it should be proscribed as concerned with terrorism is an abuse of language”, said Mr Husain, as he also mounted an argument that a ban would be “unlawful”.
He said Ms Ammori says “the aim of terrorism is to take lives and hurt people, and that’s the opposite of what we do.”
The barrister also pointed to a judgment from a senior judge from 2006 which set out: “Civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country.
“People who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history. The suffragettes are an example.”
Ben Watson KC, for the Home Office, told the High Court there was an “insuperable hurdle” in the bid to temporarily block the ban of Palestine Action.
He said if a temporary block was granted, it would be a “serious disfigurement of the statutory regime”, and added that Palestine Action could challenge the government’s decision at the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, a specialist tribunal, rather than at the High Court.
“The serious issue to be tried is met in full by the adequate alternative remedy that Parliament has provided.”
He continued: “Even if the court does conclude that there is some residual scope for judicial review… then we respectfully submit that the court needs to look at the bespoke regime that Parliament has provided.”
Palestine Action told the judge that the context of the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank is important to this legal dispute.
Blinne Ni Ghralaigh KC told the court: “It’s an annihilation, a genocide, according to leading Human Rights organisations.”
She said more than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed, including an estimated 17,000 children, with “the equivalent of six Hiroshimas” being dropped in bombs.
“People are being massacred”, she said, asserting that British-made military equipment is contributing to the Israeli military actions.
Ms Cooper is poised to sign off proscription this weekend, making membership of, or support for, Palestine Action a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Mr Husain told the court that simply wearing a Palestine Action badge or t-shirt could constitute an offence which carries a maximum six-month prison sentence.
And Ms Ghralaigh said that expressing support for Palestine Action if it is proscribed could possibly lead to being expelled from the UK.
“That’s what will chill speech”, she said.
The barrister named Normal People author Sally Rooney, who lives abroad and “fears the ramifications for her, for her work, for her books, for her programmes” if she shows support for Palestine Action.
“Is the Prime Minister going to denounce her, an Irish artist, as a supporter of a proscribed organisation?”
“Will that have ramifications for her with the BBC, etc?” Ms Ghralaigh asked.
The judge asked for clarification from the government whether lawyers acting for Palestine Action will legally be able to continue if the ban comes into effect.
Proscription was announced after two Voyager aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on June 20, an incident claimed by Palestine Action, which police said caused around £7 million worth of damage.
There is also an ongoing court case involving the storming of the UK headquarters of Elbit systems, a major supplier of equipment to the Israeli Defence Force.
Palestine Action says it has “never encouraged harm to any person at all”, and has the aim of “putting bodies in the way of the military machine, perpetrating genocide”.
Ms Ghralaigh said the Home Office’s response to the legal challenge showed a “contemptuous disregard to the atrocities being perpetrated in Gaza on a daily basis”.
She said Ms Ammori believes she will be “de-platformed” and “gagged” if Palestine Action is proscribed, she fears future restrictions on travel to the Middle East to see family, and she is concerned she will also be a target for assassination by the Israeli government.
Outside the Royal Courts of Justice, lines of police officers flanked the protest in support of Palestine Action.
David Cannon, chairman of the Jewish Network for Palestine, said: “I was brought up with Jewish heritage, feeling proud of the achievement of Israel, but I was never told that hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, that thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered.
“Now I realise it has been a slow-burn genocide for the last 80 years. Israel is founded on stolen land and stolen lives. It has not only stolen Palestinian land and lives, it has also stolen the identity of the Jewish religion.
“So it’s vital that there is a Jewish voice saying there is nothing Jewish about apartheid, there is nothing Jewish about ethnic cleansing, nothing Jewish about genocide.
“The (UK) Government are desperate to stifle free speech which is trying to point out the truth. It’s a desperate action and it may well backfire.”
A small counter-protest gathered across the street, including Mark Birbeck from the pro-Israel Our Fight organisation.
He held a banner saying “there is no genocide in Gaza”, and said: “We don’t actually support proscribing Palestine Action. We don’t think they are a terrorist organisation and in fact, our argument is that it makes a mockery of what terrorism is.
“It’s bizarre that (the Government) is presenting this as some kind of aggressive step.
“My suspicion is that Palestine Action are going to run rings around them.”
Ms Cooper announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action on June 23, stating that the vandalism of the two planes was “disgraceful” and that the group had a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage”.
MPs in the Commons voted 385 to 26, majority 359, in favour of proscribing the group on Wednesday, before the House of Lords backed the move without a vote on Thursday.
