In July 2025, the UK government designated Palestine Action as a proscribed terrorist under the Terrorism Act 2000, making it a criminal offence to be a member of, or provide support to, the group. The decision followed an incident in which members of the group entered RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and spray-painted two military aircraft; action that may fall within Section 1 of the Act as constituting ‘serious damage to property.’ 

The proscription prompted widespread protests. Police arrested a number of activists and protestors — a group that included vicars and grannies in wheelchairs. The High Court subsequently found the proscription unlawful on 13 February 2026. It heldthat the government had violated standing procedures, and that, in this case, proscription entailed ‘a disproportionate interference with the Convention rights of members.’

A little over two weeks ago, on June 16, the Court of Appeal overturned that decision. As the BBC reported: 

The government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terror organisation is lawful, the Court of Appeal has ruled. In one of the most significant rulings on national security in recent years, five of the most senior judges in the country overturned an earlier decision from the High Court that the ban had breached the right to protest and had been incorrectly taken by ministers. But five Court of Appeal judges concluded in a hearing on Monday that the ban had been ‘justified and proportionate’. In a statement, the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori said she intended to appeal the ruling to the UK Supreme Court – although it’s not clear at this stage whether it would consider the case.

Palestine Action, along with other opponents of the ban, dispute virtually every claim advanced by the government in favour of proscription. Its legal representatives have argued that the group is part of a long tradition of activism in the UK, and compared it to both the suffragettes and the campaign against apartheid. They, along with Palestine Action’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, described it as a direct-action movement that aims to  ‘prevent serious violations of international law’ in relation to Israel’s war in Gaza by targeting corporate actors and institutions that, in its view, aid and abet Israel’s ‘violations of international law against Palestinians.’ 

According to polling conducted in October of 2025, the British public holds a net unfavourable view of Palestine Action, but split on the question of proscription. Many commentators and organizations oppose the ban, seeing it as a threat to freedom of speech and association. For some, the proscription of Palestine Action is additional evidence that the Terrorism Act places too much power in the hands of the office of the Home Secretary — and that any such authority requires more robust parliamentary and judicial scrutiny.

The Court of Appeal’s emphasis on national security considerations, and particularly on the importance of  pre-empting future threats, came as no surprise to activists and critics in  the academic community. It reflects an increasing government encroachment on civic space and democratic norms, particularly in relation to political protests and Palestinian rights. At the same time, the ruling produces an ‘uncanny effect,’ one which I elaborate here.

By uncanny, I refer to a blurring of boundaries: between reality and imagination, the strange and the familiar, opacity and legibility. This effect is produced and intensified through the discourse generated in the adjudicatory process. The language and reasoning that emerged in the court proceedings offers an important opportunity to observe and analyse the production of uncanniness, as well as the work it performs. When I use the phrase ‘uncanny,’ I do not necessarily mean a hidden or repressed phenomenon in the Freudian sense. The decision is ‘uncanny’ because it involves the convergence and conflation of ostensibly contradictory ideas or positions. In doing so, it helps to normalise pre-crime security norms and state privileges. 

The Purpose of Proscription

The literature on terrorism trials and pre-emptive security highlights a deep entanglement between law and security. The legal process becomes a key site for enabling, legitimising, and contesting specific security norms and practices. This entanglement blurs the seemingly backward-looking orientation of legal decision-making – grounded in establishing the facts of a case post hoc – with the increasingly forward-oriented logic of security governance and risk management. The High Court ruling stressed the need to ‘limit or constrain the Home Secretary’s discretionary power to proscribe.’ In its reasoning, the rules and policies associated with proscription operate as legal safeguards; the the court found that the government had fail to follow those safeguards.

In contrast, the Court of Appeal adopted a pre‑emptive approach. It dismissed the High Court’s reasoning as ‘excessively analytical’ and adopted a more expansive approach to the legality of proscription — one that emphasised national security, particularly the deterrence of future threats, and affirms the breadth of the Home Secretary’s discretion in pursuing those aims. The High Court held that Palestine Action’s potential threat to both individuals and businesses in the UK — such as Elbit Systems and financial institutions linked to the Israeli defence sector (including Barclays and JP Morgan) — were ‘materially’ significant considerations in assessing proportionality. It stressed the operational benefits of proscription in deterring such future threats.

The Target of Proscription

The High Court and the Court of Appeal also offered markedly divergent interpretations regarding the target of proscription. For the High Court, the scope of proscription should be limited strictly to acts of terrorism. That scope should not encompass the entirety of an organisation’s conduct, including non‑terrorist activities. Thus, it emphasized that

this case is primarily concerned with the rights of individuals who have not acted unlawfully either before or since proscription, who would have wanted to express support for and associate with Palestine Action – whose stated aim is “to stop genocide and other atrocity crimes by causing disruption to corporate actors who aid, abet, facilitate and profit from those crimes” – and who wished to engage in peaceful protests under the banner of Palestine Action, but are stopped from doing so. It cannot sensibly be said that such persons are seeking to deflect the article 10 and 11 rights from their real purpose by employing them for ends contrary to Convention values. Nor could that be suggested in respect of others, such as journalists, academics and civil society organisations who are conscientiously seeking to abide by the law, and whose rights are impacted. 

The Court of Appeal, in contrast, adopted a much broader view. In the Court of Appeal’s assessment, ‘action’ – as opposed to ‘activities’ – includes the totality of Palestine Action’s operations, including recruitment, organisational presence, and online activity. It also noted that the Home Secretary has the discretion to determine and act upon future threats to national security and public safety, in light of the group’s growing influence and activities. 

We also see these two different temporalities of terrorism in how the Court of Appeal justified the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist group.  It described Palestine Action as a ‘covert organisation’ involved in ‘direct criminal action’ against business and institutions, including the UK’s defence infrastructure. Palestine Action, according to the Court, therefore poses a ‘very real risks’ to the general public. This ‘narrative’ is consistent with one that is widespread in contemporary counter-terrorism discourse, in which terrorism is defined as violence carried out, usually, by non-state actors who operate through loose networks and occupy liminal spaces — ones that are either ungoverned or hidden from sight until they are uncovered (or governed) by the state.

This construction of a specific terrorist identity as the group’s primary “brand” co-exists uneasily with ideas regarding the group’s non-terrorist activities as described in the High Court decision. This juxtaposition underscores the instability of the category of terrorism, particularly in relation to the nature of the ‘target of proscription.

The Consequences of Proscription

The Court of Appeal highlighted the potentially ‘chilling effect’ of the proscription of Palestine Action, particularly with regard to undermining civil liberties and democratic rights. However, the ruling drew a distinction between ‘people voluntarily holding placards supporting Palestine Action,’ which is deemed a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act, and those ‘law-abiding persons’ who assemble lawfully to express their political views. This delineation between lawful and unlawful protest co-exists with the Home Secretary’s discretion to identify and pre-empt future threats. According to the Court of Appeal’s ruling:

The assessment of future risk in the context of national security is pre-eminently a question of specialist evaluation and judgement for the executive. Such assessments involve consideration of a broad range of facts and events and often take account of expert reports based on a range of information, some of which may be secret.

Scholars have extensively documented — and critically assessed — how a network of experts, think-tanks, security intelligence, and institutions construct conventional understandings of terrorism. Similarly, questions surrounding the UK’s proscription procedures, their timing, and the rationale underpinning specific decisions repeatedly appear in parliamentary debates and wider public discourse. These criticisms notwithstanding, the content of these debates invariably set, on the one hand, civil liberties and freedoms against, on the other hand, state sovereignty and the discretionary powers exercised by the Home Secretary. In doing so, these debates simultaneously normalise and sustain both state power while and specific ‘cherished’ democratic norms and liberties — including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

As many have noted, including international human rights organisations, the proscription of Palestine Action sets a precedent that is both worrying and eerie. The excessive use of counter‑terrorism instruments is not new; however, the proscription of Palestine Action introduces a new dimension to securitisation by extending these powers to a wider range of actions and organisations.