Protest or terrorism? Palestine Action wins right to challenge ban in Britain

After more than 200 arrests, activists now hope to build on last week's court ruling with a mass demo that could fill police cells

- John Simpson & Duncan Gardham

Flecks of red paint - the calling card of Palestine Action are still visible on the forecourt and shopfront of an accountancy firm in Stamford Hill, north London.

One of its employees, wearing the modest black suit that denotes his Hasidic Jewish faith, thumbs a spot of paint left on the boardroom table after the window was smashed by activists targeting the business in May.

"People in the area were shocked," he says, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They were scared because they didn't know why we had been targeted."

The owners did. The activists stencilled a message on the forecourt in spray paint. It read: "Drop Elbit" - a reference to the Israeli arms manufacturer. The Stamford Hill business owns an industrial park in Kent where a subsidiary of Elbit has a factoryalthough the firm said it had sold Elbit's plot and had been wrongly targeted.

The attack is one of more than 385 acts of criminal damage carried out by Palestine Action since 2020. The direct action protest group had stepped up its activism in recent months in response to Israel's bombing and starvation of Palestinians.

The experience of the Stamford Hill business, and of two other Jewish-owned sites, played a significant part in the decision last month by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

The final straw for the government appears to have been a raid by activists on RAF Brize Norton on 20 June. Protesters broke through a perimeter fence, sprayed red paint into the engine of an Airbus air-to-air military refuelling plane and caused an estimated £7m of damage.

A fifth suspect was arrested yesterday in connection with the vandalism. The 22-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, said counter-terrorism policing southeast.