LONDON: UK campaign group Palestine Action on Monday said it would challenge its planned proscription as a terrorist group, as the British government said it could be banned by the end of the week.
The government announced last week plans to designate the pro-Palestinian group as a “terrorist” organization after its activists broke into a British air force base and vandalized two planes.
The group, which has condemned the move as an attack on free speech, said an urgent hearing to challenge the proscription will be held at the High Court in London on Friday.
The challenge was backed by Amnesty International and other rights groups.
Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, said in a statement the proposed ban would have “far-reaching implications” on “fundamental freedoms of speech, expression and assembly in Britain.”
After announcing the measure last week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper launched the process to ban the group on Monday in parliament.
The ban is set to be debated in parliament on Wednesday and Thursday, and could take effect from Friday.
Labour holds a massive majority in the House of Commons, meaning the proposal should pass easily.
Palestine Action said it was seeking an injunction or interim relief from the courts “because of the Home Secretary’s decision to try to steamroll this through Parliament.”
Earlier this month, two of its activists broke into the RAF Brize Norton base in southern England and sprayed two planes with red paint.
Cooper last week said the vandalism was “the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage” committed by the group since it formed in 2020.
The government cites previous damage claimed by the group in actions at a Thales defense factory in Glasgow in 2022 and on Israeli defense tech firm Elbit Systems UK last year in Bristol, in the country’s southwest.
“Such acts do not represent legitimate acts of protest and the level of seriousness of Palestine Action’s activity has met the test for proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000,” the government said in a statement.
Palestine Action says it is a “direct action and civil disobedience protest movement” seeking “to prevent serious violations of international law by Israel.”
“Spraying red paint on war planes is not terrorism. Causing disruption to the UK-based arms factories used by Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, is not terrorism,” co-founder Ammori said.
“The terrorism and war crimes are being committed in Palestine by Israel, which is being armed by Britain, and benefitting from British military support.”
Palestine Action to challenge UK ban
https://arab.news/grdk5
Palestine Action to challenge UK ban
- Palestine Action said an urgent hearing to challenge the proscription will be held at the High Court in London on Friday
- The ban of Palestine Action is set to be debated in parliament on Wednesday and Thursday, and could take effect from Friday
Tug of war: how US presidents battle Congress for military powers
- The last official declaration of war by Congress was as far back as World War II
WASHINGTON, United States: Donald Trump’s unleashing of operation “Epic Fury” against Iran has once more underscored the long and bitter struggle between US presidents and Congress over who has the power to decide on foreign military action.
In his video address announcing “major combat” with the Islamic republic, Trump didn’t once mention any authorization or consultation with the US House of Representatives or Senate.
In doing so he sidelined not only Democrats, who called for an urgent war powers vote, but also his own Republican party as he asserts his dominance over a largely cowed legislature.
A US official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had called top congressional leaders known as the “Gang of Eight” to give them a heads up on the Iran attack — adding that one was unreachable.
Rubio also “laid out the situation” and consulted with the same leaders on Tuesday in an hour-long briefing, the US official said.
According to the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war.
But at the same time the founding document of the United States first signed in 1787 says that the president is the “commander in chief” of the military, a definition that US leaders have in recent years taken very broadly.
The last official declaration of war by Congress was as far back as World War II.
There was no such proclamation during the unpopular Vietnam War, and it was then that Congress sought to reassert its powers.
In 1973 it adopted the War Powers Resolution, passed over Richard Nixon’s veto, to become the only lasting limit on unilateral presidential military action abroad.
The act allows the president to carry out a limited military intervention to respond to an urgent situation created by an attack against the United States.
In his video address on Saturday, Trump evoked an “imminent” threat to justify strikes against Iran.
- Sixty days -
Yet under this law, the president must still inform Congress within 48 hours.
It also says that if the president deploys US troops for a military action for more than 60 days, the head of state must then obtain the authorization of Congress for continued action.
That falls short of an official declaration of war.
The US Congress notably authorized the use of force in such a way after the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States by Al-Qaeda. Presidents have used it over the past two decades for not only the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan but a series of operations in several countries linked to the “War on Terror.”
Trump is far from the first US president to launch military operations without going through Congress.
Democrat Bill Clinton launched US air strikes against Kosovo in 1999 as part of a NATO campaign, despite the lack of a green light from skeptical lawmakers.
Barack Obama did the same for airstrikes in Libya in 2011.
Trump followed their example in his first term in 2018 when he launched airstrikes in Syria along with Britain and France.
But since his return to power the 79-year-old has sought to push presidential power to its limits, and that includes in the military sphere.
Trump has ordered strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in Latin America without consulting Congress, and in June 2025 struck Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Perhaps the most controversial act was when he ordered the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in a lightning military raid on January 3.
Republicans however managed to knock down moves by Democrats for a rare war powers resolution that would have curbed his authority over Venezuela operations.
Trump has meanwhile sought to extend his powers over the home front. Democrats have slammed the Republican for deploying the National Guard in several US cities in what he calls a crackdown on crime and immigration.
