High Court overturns Palestine Action ban

The High Court has ruled Britain’s ban on Palestine Action unlawful.

A panel of judges found on Friday that the ban resulted in “very significant interference with the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of assembly.”

Activists were jubilant.

“Elbit Systems: pack up your bags. Palestine Action is back,” lisa minerva luxx said at a press conference outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Elbit Systems is Israel’s biggest arms firm. It has at least six remaining sites in the UK but Palestine Action’s assertive campaigns have shut down four others.

Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori called the ruling a “monumental victory” and said the ban will be remembered as “one of the most extreme attacks on free speech in recent British history.”

Ammori led the successful legal challenge, supported by a team of lawyers.

The ruling keeps the ban in place temporarily, however.

Details of how the group will be removed from the “terrorist” proscription list are still to be settled by the court, with further proceedings in a week.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she was “disappointed by the court’s decision” and that the government would appeal.

Her predecessor Yvette Cooper banned the direct action protest group last summer under Britain’s draconian “anti-terror” law.

This made expressing support for the group a criminal offense punishable by as many as 14 years in prison.

Palestine Action’s direct action campaigns have been on hold for the last seven months while it pushed to reverse the ban.

But since then, thousands of supporters have defied the ban, organizing civil disobedience campaigns holding up signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”

Campaign group Defend Our Juries said on Friday that the almost 3,000 arrests made during these protests “are now unlawful.”

Dozens of protesters held similar signs outside the High Court in London on Friday morning. Despite police presence, there were no reports of arrests by early afternoon.

After the ruling, London’s Metropolitan Police announced its officers would no longer arrest people expressing support for Palestine Action but would gather evidence for potential prosecutions later – calling this “the most proportionate approach we can take” while legal proceedings continued.

Today’s victory for Palestine Action is the latest blow to the government’s attempts to eliminate the group – a policy pursued in collusion with Israel.

Successive British governments have conspired with the Israeli embassy to attack, smear and repress the group.

Recently, the Labour government has even fabricated insinuations of Iranian funding for Palestine Action – which employs few resources beyond a small budget for sledgehammers and paint raised by volunteers.

But the government’s own terrorism advisor Jonathan Hall told Channel 4’s Dispatchesprogram this week that the government’s insinuations about a supposed Iran link were “wrong” and that he regretted hints about supposedly secret intelligence.

Also last week, a jury freed five Palestine Action political prisoners, finding that all six were not guilty of the most serious charges.

The “Filton 6” carried out direct action against an Israeli-owned arms factory near Bristol in 2024.

As this writer explained on The Electronic Intifada Livestream on 12 February, government prosecutors have announced that they will seek a retrial on the lesser charges where the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Read the details of that case or watch the full segment from the livestream in the video above.

Originally published by The Electronic Intifada, 13 February 2026.