The award-winning Irish novelist Sally Rooney says she will continue to support the pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action despite the recent UK law banning the group as a terrorist organisation.
In an August 16 opinion column in the Irish Times, Rooney, 34, said: "I too support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it.”
Author of the bestsellers “Normal People”, and “Intermezzo”, Rooney says that she will use income derived from BBC television adaptations of her novels to fund the movement.
“I intend to use these proceeds from my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can,” she wrote.
But this commitment could cost her dearly. Since July 5, being a member of the group or supporting it – especially financially – are now criminal offences punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Destruction of property, occupation, red paint...
Palestine Action was launched in 2020 by activist Huda Ammori. Born near Manchester to a Palestinian father and Iraqi mother, the 30-year-old initially campaigned with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the largest British pro-Palestinian group, promoting boycotts against Israel and lobbying British MPs.
But in 2020, frustrated by the “ineffectiveness of traditional campaigns”, she decided to quit her job and join forces with Richard Barnard, a long-time activist with the climate action group Extinction Rebellion. Together, they founded Palestine Action with the goal to denounce “British complicity" with the State of Israel, particularly on the issue of arms sales.
Palestine Action follows Extinction Rebellion's tactics of civil disobedience – occupying company premises, spray-painting buildings with red paint, destroying equipment or having activists chain themselves to factory gates. The group favours direct action and increasingly resorts to acts of vandalism.
Initially, the group mainly targeted the British subsidiaries of Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms manufacturer. In September 2020, activists occupied one of Elbit’s factories in Shenstone, north of Birmingham. But gradually, Palestine Action expanded its activities and began targeting banks, universities, insurance companies and government offices, as a way to highlight links to Israel it finds objectionable.
In 2022, members of the group stormed a site belonging to French defence contractor Thales in Glasgow, armed with smoke bombs and banners. In March 2024, its activists damaged a portrait of former UK Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, co-author of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported a "home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.
The group has stepped up its campaign of civil disobedience since the start of the war in Gaza, in which more than 60,000 Gazans have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians, according to health officials in the Palestinian territory.
Read moreLondon police arrest at least 522 supporters of banned pro-Palestine group
According to The Sunday Times, Palestine Action carried out 170 acts of protest in 2024, up from 17 in 2020. Its actions included vandalising the BBC and Foreign Office buildings with paint and blocking dozens of businesses.
In March 2025, Palestine Action made headlines for targeting a golf course owned by US President Donald Trump in Turnberry, Scotland. After daubing paint on one of the buildings, activists wrote “Gaza is not for sale” in capital letters on one of the greens. This was a reference to Trump’s plan to transform the Gaza Strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East", a plan denounced by the UN chief as support for ethnic cleansing.
Things came to a head on June 20, when several Palestine Action members infiltrated the UK's largest air force base at Brize Norton and damaged two military aircraft. The damage was estimated at £7 million (€8 million) .
Read moreUK moves to ban protest group Palestine Action
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government quickly introduced legislation to ban Palestine Action. The bill was passed a few days later by Parliament, which added the group to its list of “terrorist organisations”. Its name now appears alongside those of other proscribed groups like Hamas, al Qaeda, the Russian paramilitary group Wagner and certain neo-Nazi groups.
The ban means it is now illegal to be a member of Palestine Action or to show support for the group – even wearing a T-shirt bearing its logo.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper justified the ban in a statement to the House of Commons on June 23: “Since its inception in 2020, Palestine Action has orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions, including key national infrastructure and defence firms,” she said. “Its activity has increased in frequency and severity since the start of 2024 and its methods have become more aggressive, with its members demonstrating a willingness to use violence.”
More than 700 arrests
But the ban has not discouraged activists supporting the Palestinian cause, quite the contrary. Since Palestine Action was banned, demonstrations of support for the group have taken place across the country.
More than 700 people have been arrested for defying the ban and around 60 are facing prosecution, solely for supporting Palestine Action, notably by holding up placards during non-violent protests.
Among those arrested were the award-winning poet Alice Oswald and many ordinary citizens – both young and not so young. According to the Metropolitan Police, half of those arrested during a demonstration organised in early August were over 60 years old.
The images of people arrested simply for holding up placards that say, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, shared on social media, helped spark a public outcry in the country. Many people have denounced a “disproportionate” decision and an “attack on freedom of expression and the right to protest”.
“Hundreds of people are facing potential prison sentences for sitting quietly holding placards. It isn’t difficult to see why this could be a disproportionate restriction on people’s freedom of expression,” notes Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK.
A ‘confusion between protest and terrorism’
In an open letter published on August 6 in The Guardian, 52 academics and writers, including philosophers Judith Butler and Angela Davis, called on the government to reverse its decision. They denounced the ban as “an attack both on the entire pro-Palestine movement and on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, assembly and protest".
Lawyers’ organisations including the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) have sent letters to Cooper deploring the ban.
Netpol’s letter says that “proscription of a direct-action protest group is an unprecedented and extremely regressive step for civil liberties".
“The conflation of protest and terrorism is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes. Our government has stated that it is committed to respecting the rule of law: this must include the right to protest,” the group says.
“To use the Terrorism Act to ban Palestine Action from direct action would be an abuse of this legislation and an interference with the right to protest” – and “a terrifying blow to our civil liberties”, Netpol adds.
Internationally, the proscription raises questions even at the highest levels of the United Nations.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, the ban “raises serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist in nature”.
Türk points out that “according to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages, for purpose of intimidating a population or to compel a government to take a certain action or not”.
To date, no one has been injured by the actions of Palestine Action.
The ban on Palestine Action was immediately challenged in court by the group's co-founder Ammori. Her appeal is scheduled to be heard in November.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
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