EXPLAINER
MPs within the UK have voted to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation, however what has it truly finished?
Members of Parliament in the UK voted overwhelmingly this week to proscribe the marketing campaign group, Palestine Motion, as a terrorist organisation underneath anti-terrorism legal guidelines, placing the group on a par with armed teams comparable to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
A draft order to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 to do that, introduced by House Secretary Yvette Cooper, handed by the Home of Commons on Wednesday by 385 votes to 26.
Cooper tabled the order in parliament simply days after Palestine Motion activists broke into RAF Brize Norton, the biggest station of the Royal Air Pressure in Oxfordshire, and sprayed two navy planes with crimson paint, leading to hundreds of thousands of kilos of prison harm, in accordance with police.
On Friday, the Excessive Courtroom in London is listening to a problem to the order. Palestine Motion co-founder Huda Ammori has requested for a short lived block on the laws.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the Airbus Voyager incident in an X post, saying: “The act of vandalism dedicated at RAF Brize Norton is disgraceful.”
Palestine Motion describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms trade in the UK with direct motion”. It says it’s “dedicated to ending world participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.
The federal government claims it’s a “terrorist” outfit.
However what has the group truly finished?
What occurred at Brize Norton?
Within the highest-profile transfer made by the group to date, activists sprayed crimson paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager plane, used for air-to-air refuelling.
According to Manaal Siddiqui, a spokesperson for Palestine Motion, “These [Royal Air Force] plane can be utilized to refuel and have been used to refuel Israeli fighter jets.” He added that planes from Brize Norton fly to the British air pressure base in Cyprus, from the place they’re “dispatched on spy missions and that intelligence is shared with the Israeli authorities and the Israeli air forces”.
What else has the group finished?
Since its founding in July 2020, Palestine Motion (PA) has carried out lots of of protests throughout the UK geared toward disrupting the operations of firms they accuse of taking advantage of Israeli navy operations, with a specific concentrate on the Israeli arms producer, Elbit Methods.
Palestine Motion members’ techniques sometimes contain breaking into amenities, chaining themselves to equipment, daubing buildings with crimson paint and destroying tools.
They embrace the next incidents:
- The group launched a collection of break-ins at Elbit’s Ferranti website in Oldham, close to Manchester in northern England. Between 2020 and early 2022, the positioning was repeatedly occupied and vandalised, culminating in Elbit closing the power in January 2022 – an end result Palestine Motion declared as a significant victory.
- In 2021, the group occupied the Leicester drone manufacturing facility operated by UAV Tactical Methods, a subsidiary of Elbit. Activists chained themselves to the roof for practically per week. Ten individuals have been arrested, however later acquitted.
- All through 2022, PA’s actions grew to become extra frequent. In April, they blockaded one other Elbit website in Braunstone, Leicestershire. In June, they broke into the Thales UK manufacturing facility in Glasgow and induced greater than 1 million kilos ($1.37m) of harm with smoke bombs and property destruction. 5 activists have been jailed.
- Following the launch of Israel’s warfare on Gaza in October 2023, Palestine Motion intensified its efforts. They focused the BBC’s headquarters in London with crimson paint to protest towards the broadcaster’s perceived pro-Israel bias, and blockaded amenities of arms producers together with Lockheed Martin, the US aerospace and defence group which has a base in London, and Leonardo, the defence and safety group.
- Palestine Motion has additionally expanded internationally. In November 2023, its newly launched US department occupied the roof of an Elbit facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, with three activists arrested and later launched with misdemeanour prices.
- In August 2024, activists drove a van into Elbit’s headquarters in Bristol, stormed the constructing and induced intensive harm. At about the identical time, they spray-painted the Ministry of Defence, in central London, crimson and defaced a statue of Arthur Balfour with tomato ketchup contained in the Home of Commons. Balfour was a former Conservative prime minister who, as serving international secretary in 1917, authored the Balfour Declaration which supported the institution of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
- In June 2025, the group carried out one among its most provocative actions so far: infiltrating RAF Brize Norton, the UK’s largest airbase. Activists used electrical scooters to breach safety and vandalised navy plane with crimson paint.
What does Palestine Motion say about being banned?
In a press release posted on its X profile, Palestine Motion stated: “The true crime right here will not be crimson paint being sprayed on these warplanes, however the warfare crimes which were enabled with these planes due to the UK authorities’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”
The group added that the federal government’s transfer may danger criminalising official protest.
The assertion additionally accused Starmer of “hypocrisy” for the reason that prime minister, again in 2003, supported protesters who broke into an RAF base to cease US bombers heading to Iraq. On the time, Starmer was a lawyer.
“I believe it’s a really knee-jerk response from an embarrassed authorities, and it’s an overblown response,” Siddiqui stated.
Siddiqui stated it was unprecedented for Palestine Motion to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. “The vast majority of the proscribed teams are worldwide. The vast majority of them take actions in very, very other ways. Palestine Motion can be an entire outlier. It’s a draconian method for the federal government to stifle protests that they only don’t like. It’s genuinely terrifying for anybody who cares about civil liberties within the UK.”
In all, 81 teams are proscribed within the UK underneath the Terrorism Act 2000. They embrace political actions with armed wings comparable to Hamas and Hezbollah, in addition to armed teams like ISIS (ISIL), al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan.