The pro-Palestine group that broke into RAF Brize Norton sparking a major security review is expected to be banned by the government next week in a move which will anger campaigners.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is planning to proscribe Palestine Action, effectively branding it a terrorist organisation.
She is preparing a written ministerial statement that will be placed before parliament on Monday, a Whitehall source confirmed. It will then need to be enacted through new legislation. If passed, it will make becoming a member of the group illegal.
The decision comes as a security review begins at military bases across the UK, after activists broke into the RAF base in Oxfordshire and sprayed two military planes with red paint.
Palestine Action released a short video on Friday morning showing two people driving electric scooters unimpeded inside the airbase at night, in an embarrassing breach of Ministry of Defence (MoD) security at a site that holds transport planes used by the king and prime minister.
The group said it had targeted RAF Voyager aircraft used for transport and refuelling, and that “activists have interrupted Britain’s direct participation in the commission of genocide and war crimes across the Middle East”.
Footage posted online showed two people inside the airbase in darkness, with one riding on a scooter up to an Airbus Voyager and spraying paint into its jet engine.
After sharing the footage, a Palestine Action spokesperson said: “Despite publicly condemning the Israeli government, Britain continues to send military cargo, fly spy planes over Gaza and refuel US and Israeli fighter jets.”
The group claimed its activists had evaded security and had put the air-to-air refuelling tankers “out of service”.
However, RAF engineers have been assessing the damage, with a defence source earlier telling the BBC that they did not expect the incident would affect operations.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, condemned the action as “disgraceful” describing it as an “act of vandalism”.
Counter-terrorism police are investigating the incident alongside Thames Valley police and the MoD.
RAF Brize Norton serves as the hub for UK strategic air transport and refuelling, including flights to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. The air force has conducted reconnaissance flights over Gaza out of the Cyprus base.
Other groups that have been recently proscribed in the UK include Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni Islamist organisation with a goal to establish a caliphate under sharia law. It was banned last year by the Tory government. The Wagner group, the Russian private military company, was banned in 2023.
After reports of the impending ban emerged, Palestine Action wrote on X: “We represent every person who stands for Palestinian liberation. If they want to ban us, they ban us all.”
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote on the same platform that it was “outrageous” that the government was banning “a non-violent direct action group”.
Palestine Action was founded in 2020 by Huda Ammori, whose father is Palestinian, and Richard Barnard, a leftwing activist.
The organisation, which focuses its campaigns on multinational arms dealers and corporate banks, recently targeted a factory in Shenstone claiming it made drones for the Israeli army.
“Using disruptive tactics, Palestine Action targets corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex,” it says on its website. “Palestine Action takes strategic, sustained and focused direct action against key targets.”
A proscribed organisation is an organisation or group that it is illegal to join or show support for, because it has been identified as being concerned in terrorism.
The home secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000 if that organisation commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for terrorism, promotes or encourages terrorism – including the unlawful glorification of terrorism – or is otherwise concerned in terrorism.