07/05/2025
NEW UPDATES to Peter Hallward's "Enforcing Complicity and Silence: The UK’s Plan to Proscribe Palestine Action":
Update 3 July 2025. The House of Lords today approved Cooper’s proscription without a vote. An amendment expressing regret that “the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation (1) undermines civil liberties, including civil disobedience, (2) constitutes a misuse of anti-terrorism legislation, given that offences such as property damage can be dealt with under other criminal law, (3) suppresses dissent against the United Kingdom’s policy on Israel, and (4) criminalises support for a protest group, thereby creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression” was defeated by 144 votes to 16.
Meanwhile one of the two RAF planes that Palestine Action spray-painted (if not “damaged beyond repair”, as some media outlets had suggested) on 20 June was reported to be already back in the air. It was tracked making a flight from Brize Norton to Glasgow on Tuesday 1st July and another over the North Sea on Wednesday 2nd July.
Back in Palestine, on 3 July Israel again “escalated its offensive in Gaza before imminent talks about a ceasefire, with warships and artillery launching one of the deadliest and most intense bombardments in the devastated Palestinian territory for many months. Medics and officials in Gaza reported that about 90 people were killed” over the night and day of 3rd July, while more than a hundred were killed over the night of 1st-2nd July.
It was further confirmed on 3 July that Israel’s body-count for 2 July 2025 included one of Palestine’s most senior and renowned doctors, the director of Gaza’s Indonesia Hospital, Dr Marwan al-Sultan. He was killed along with his wife, daughter, sister and son-in-law. As his surviving daughter explained, they were all assassinated by a missile which clearly targeted their specific apartment, leaving the rest of their building largely untouched.
“Sultan was an experienced cardiologist and a leading figure in Gaza’s medical community,” notes The Guardian. “He was also one of only two remaining heart specialists in the territory [...]. His death means that all of the directors of the hospitals in northern Gaza have either been killed or detained by the Israeli military forces.” “Through 20 months of war,” adds the Washington Post, “the cardiologist had become one of the conflict’s main narrators, describing to the world again and again the horrific scenes in his wards, even as he battled to keep the lights on at the hospital he managed in the north.”
The Indonesia Hospital was forced to suspend operations in May after repeated IDF attacks, and since early June there have been no functioning hospitals in north Gaza at all. According to UN figures, Israel has now killed at least 1,400 healthcare workers in Gaza since this latest phase of its war began in October 2023. According to the US-based NGO Medglobal, more than 180 other medical staff remain in Israeli jails, with many reportedly subject to torture and abuse; their number includes the director of the (repeatedly besieged) Kamal Adwan hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, who was imprisoned without charge in December 2024.
Also on 3 July, former Labour MPs Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn formally announced their intention to help form a new political party, and the UN published a substantial new report by special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. This report details some of the many ways international corporations (e.g. Palantir, Volvo, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Pimco, Vanguard, to say nothing of arms companies like Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries or Lockheed Martin...) continue to profit from Israel’s genocide. Albanese observes that “for Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide – generated a sharp surge in their annual profits. Foreign arms companies, especially producers of munitions and ordnance, also profit.” Albanese concludes her report with recommendations that urge all UN member states “(a) To impose sanctions and a full arms embargo on Israel, including all existing agreements and dual-use items such as technology and civilian heavy machinery; (b) To suspend or prevent all trade agreements and investment relations, and impose sanctions, including asset freezes, on entities and individuals involved in activities that may endanger the Palestinians; (c) To enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law.” She further “urges the International Criminal Court and national judiciaries to investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for their part in the commission of international crimes and laundering of the proceeds from those crimes.”
Update 4 July 2025. High Court judge Martin Chamberlain today considered the request from Palestine Action’s Huda Ammori for an interim order to delay Yvette Cooper’s ban from taking effect until after the court undertakes a judicial review. “The home secretary is rushing through the implementation of the proscription at midnight tonight,” Ammori argued, “despite the fact that our legal challenge is ongoing and that she has been completely unclear about how it will be enforced, leaving the public in the dark about their rights to free speech and expression after midnight tonight when this proscription comes into effect.”
As widely expected, late this afternoon Martin Chamberlain declined to grant this application for interim relief. Chamberlain said: “I have concluded that the harm which would ensue if interim relief is refused but the claim later succeeds is insufficient to outweigh the strong public interest in maintaining the order in force.”
As The Guardian reports, “Raza Husain KC, representing Ammori, described the proscription decision in the hearing before Chamberlain as “an ill-considered, discriminatory and authoritarian abuse of statutory power”. He said it was “absurd” to label a civil disobedience direct action protest group that does not advocate violence as a terrorist organisation. “The main target has been stopping Elbit Systems … which markets itself as the backbone of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” said Husain. “As my client says: ‘The aim of terrorism is to take lives and hurt people, that’s the opposite of what we do.’”
Chamberlain’s decision to uphold Cooper’s proscription “means Palestine Action will become the first direct action protest group to be banned under the Terrorism Act. [...] Another hearing is scheduled for 21 July when Palestine Action will apply for permission for a judicial review to quash the order. In the meantime, and unless the judicial review is successful, membership of, or inviting support for, the group will carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.”
Earlier today Martha Spurrier, a human rights barrister and former director of Liberty, provided The Guardian a useful overview of the imminent legal process and its implications. “If the government prevails,” she explained, “that is not the end of the story – but the route to overturning the ban becomes significantly harder. The minute the order is effective it is strengthened by being the status quo. The deference shown to the government on national security issues is enormous.”
Cooper’s ban of Palestine Action is now cleared to come into effect at midnight tonight. From now on information about Palestine Action may become more difficult to access. Useful websites should include Netpol (Network for Police Organising) as well as campaigning groups like Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War, along with outlets like Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, etc. UK groups opposed to PA’s proscription currently plan to take action to defy the ban every Saturday. The next nation-wide rally for Palestine is currently organised for Saturday 19 July, i.e. two days before the high court hearing scheduled for 21 July.
Photo: New direct-action group calling itself "Yvette Cooper" takes up struggle against genocide. © The Skwawkbox
