US designates Palestine Action a terrorist organisation

The United States Treasury has designated Palestine Action a transnational terrorist organisation, listing the British protest group in a package of sanctions aimed at what it termed "violent far-left terrorist networks".

Two others were named in the same announcement. One is Masar Badil, a movement organised around what it calls an "alternative revolutionary path" for Palestinian rights. The other is an Italian technology collective, Autistici/Inventati, which the Treasury accuses of supplying digital architecture and services to anti-fascist cells.

The Treasury presented the step as complementing a decision the British government took in July of last year, when it proscribed Palestine Action. That ban is itself under challenge and reaches the Supreme Court in November.

Huda Ammori, who co-founded the group, called the sanctions a further layer laid over the proscription, and said the reach of the American financial system into ordinary life in the West only becomes visible to people once it is turned against them. Supporters are now firmly within Washington's sights, she said, and can expect closer surveillance and more intelligence shared between the two governments.

Max Geller, an American citizen who once belonged to Palestine Action and now lives in Britain, said this was "a very frightening time". He does not know whether his American bank accounts will be closed or his personal payments picked over, he said, and travelling home to elderly parents has turned into an anxious prospect. Measures of this kind are not usually applied to US citizens, he added, so nobody yet knows what they mean for someone in his position.

Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer who co-founded the campaign group Defend our Juries, said the designation raises a question about the more than 2,700 people arrested in Britain under the Terrorism Act 2000 for voicing support for Palestine Action: whether they too now risk losing their bank accounts. He also asked whether the British government would hand their personal details to Washington, which has no other way of obtaining them.

There is a precedent close at hand. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Palestine, was sanctioned by the Trump administration in July of last year over her recommendation that the International Criminal Court prosecute Israeli officials and executives of American companies, and has said she can no longer carry out ordinary financial transactions.

Days after the sanctions were announced, it emerged on Friday that seven people accused of breaking into and digging up Donald Trump's Turnberry golf resort in Scotland in March 2025, and spray-painting "Gaza is not 4 sale" on the clubhouse, are charged with malicious damage aggravated by a terrorist connection. If that aggravation is applied they could face longer custodial sentences, and be treated as terrorists for decades after their release.