Rather than confronting its own actions, the government has sought to divert attention from the central issue: the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide. Throughout Israel’s assault on Gaza, the UK has provided sustained political and diplomatic support, supplied vital components for F-35 fighter jets, and conducted R1 surveillance flights over Gaza. Taken together, these actions render the British government not merely complicit, but materially involved in the violence itself.
The British government is complicit in Israel’s systematic unmaking of Palestine, including its illegal occupation, its system of apartheid, and its role in the Gaza genocide, and Palestine Action has directly challenged this complicity. Where public order and civil disobedience laws once failed to suppress this activism, the state escalated to the use of exceptional anti-terror legislation.
The government has since resorted to the Terrorism Act to preemptively criminalise activists and expose them to sentences of up to 14 years’ imprisonment, a level of punishment grossly disproportionate to non-violent direct action. This disproportionality and choice of legislation signal a political motive.
The application of the Terrorism Act 2000 to non-violent direct action strips activists of ordinary legal protections and subjects them to an exceptional penal regime, including extended pre-charge detention, heightened surveillance powers, restrictions on association and expression, and dramatically increased sentencing exposure. Such measures are ordinarily reserved for acts involving mass violence, not protest aimed at preventing harm.
The use of anti-terror law in this context does not merely criminalise conduct; it redefines dissent itself as a security threat, preempting fair adjudication and conditioning the public to accept extraordinary punishment for ordinary political opposition.