Category: Palestine

Two-State Solution x 2

Britain called Israel’s occupation unlawful. It should say the same of Western Sahara.

Andrea Maria Pelliconi,   2 October 2026          6 mins read

Ed Miliband’s statement to the Commons on 8 September 2026 was an act of legal and moral clarity. The Foreign Secretary announced that the Government now regards Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as unlawful, adopting the conclusion of the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion amid Israel’s explicit intention to extend permanent sovereignty through an expansionist settlement agenda. Miliband was right to say that Britain shall not be a bystander to the destruction of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and insist that the law does not bend to the convenience of the powerful. But the Government’s abidance by international law should be measured by its coherence. Fourteen months before that statement, the same Labour Government – under Keir Starmer – took the opposite side on an identical question.

In June 2025 the UK abandoned five decades of neutrality on Western Sahara. In its joint communiqué with Rabat, it declared Morocco’s 2007 autonomy proposal “the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis” for resolving the dispute. The plan offers the Saharawi people autonomy within the Moroccan state and forecloses independence altogether. The UK’s endorsement of the plan is part of a broader diplomatic current, led by Washington, pushing to convert the Moroccan proposal into a settled international position. The message that the UK’s endorsement of the Moroccan plan sends to occupying powers worldwide is that occupation, once entrenched deeply enough and for long enough, will in time be rewarded with recognition. This is the opposite of what the Foreign Secretary affirms for the West Bank.

There is a clear parallel between the situations of Palestine and Western Sahara, which has been a listed Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1963. In 1975 the ICJ found that Morocco had no sovereignty over the territory and the Sahrawi people held the right to self-determination. Morocco then spent the following decades entrenching its control over roughly four-fifths of the territory through settlements, financial inducement, and large-scale infrastructures and development projects, while simultaneously displacing the Saharawi to nearby countries, until they became a minority in their own homeland. In 1991, the UN deployed MINURSO to organise a referendum on self-determination which was never held, obstructed above all by disputes over who may vote, with Morocco seeking to enrol its own settlers and to exclude displaced Saharawi. Western Sahara has faced prolonged occupation, settlement and demographic change, the establishment of irreversible facts on the ground, and the drive to turn occupation into permanent annexation – just as in the West Bank.

The two cases’ resemblance means the law that governs both is, or should be, the same. The 2024 ICJ opinion not only declared Israel’s occupation unlawful but also reaffirmed the general duty of states not to recognise a situation created by a serious breach of peremptory   norms, nor to render aid or assistance in maintaining it, and to cooperate in bringing it to an end. That duty applies to all situations of denial of self-determination, the unlawful acquisition of territory, and the entrenchment of settlement in occupied land. Morocco’s presence in Western Sahara engages each of those wrongs. A government that treats the duty of non-recognition as binding in the West Bank cannot treat it as optional in Western Sahara.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has understood this. In its Front Polisario judgments, culminating in the ruling of 4 October 2024, it held that EU-Morocco trade agreements could not lawfully extend to Western Sahara absent the consent of the Sahrawi people, including those who have been displaced, and it has been equally clear that the territory is not part of Morocco and has a separate and distinct status. Britain’s June 2025 communiqué moves in the opposite direction to the CJEU as it treats deeper economic engagement as a contribution to the dispute’s resolution rather than as an act that entrenches the very situation international law obliges third states not to recognise.

The latest communiqué on Palestine reaffirmed British support for a two-state solution between Israel and a sovereign, viable Palestinian state, and the Foreign Secretary built his entire statement a few days ago around that objective – as the “North Star” of British policy, in the words of Miliband himself. Self-determination cannot be a right Britain upholds for Palestinians and withholds from the Saharawi. If the UK advocates for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, it cannot exclude the possibility of the same outcome for Moroccans and Saharawi by endorsing a plan that only presupposes integration. Autonomy may well be one legitimate option, but it cannot be the only one on the table. The Saharawi are entitled to choose freely either integration with Morocco or independent statehood. A choice narrowed to a single permitted result is not a choice, and it is not what the 1975 opinion or the referendum mandate contemplated.

It might be objected that the two cases are not alike and comparable, because the scale of violence in Palestine is far greater than anything in Western Sahara today, and that this justifies more urgent condemnation of Israel regardless of what the law says in the abstract. The premise is largely true, as the level of ongoing violence in both Gaza and the West Bank is higher, and the ongoing armed conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, reignited in 2020 after the collapse of the ceasefire, goes almost entirely unremarked. The fighting takes place outside the occupied territory, around which Morocco has built a military wall to keep outside the displaced Sahrawis and the Polisario Front. This not only shows that Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara is not less serious than the West Bank – if anything, it is more entrenched, which would require stronger responses. In the early years of the occupation Morocco drove the majority of the Saharawi population into exile, killing many in the process, in events that Saharawi describe as ethnic cleansing and genocide; today, only one quarter of Sahrawi lives in Morocco, facing continued oppression and discrimination.

In terms of legal obligations under international law, the wrongful nature of an occupation does not (only) rest on the violence it generates but in the occupation itself, as the ICJ has held in its 2024 advisory opinion. Britain and others shouldn’t have waited for such a tragic escalation in Palestine to take serious action on Israel’s occupation. And Western Sahara demonstrates that an unlawful occupation left unaddressed for fifty years never resolves itself; to the contrary, it was precisely when states such as the United States began to recognise Moroccan sovereignty over the occupied territory, in exchange for normalisation with Israel in 2020, that the armed conflict resumed, leading to more violence.

Ed Miliband correctly told the House that Britain loses credibility and influence on the world stage when it fails to uphold the values it professes. If Britain holds itself bound by the ICJ’s 2024 opinion on the West Bank, it should hold itself bound by the ICJ’s 1975 opinion on Western Sahara. It should reflect the duty of non-recognition in all the economic relationships it chooses, rather than expanding trade, finance, and infrastructure into another occupied territory. And it should withdraw its June 2025 endorsement of a plan with a foreclosed outcome, support self-determination for Africa’s oldest incomplete decolonisation, and let the Saharawi decide their own future.

Palestine Action and the Paradoxical Status of Protests in Democracies

Alun Gibbs, 19 March 2026    8 mins read

Protests are never very comfortable. They may be disruptive, awkward and costly. In a democracy they also pose difficult foundational questions as they imply that change (sometimes quite radical change) is required and that this can be achieved only by a recourse to measures and methods which lie outside the usual democratic political processes, often for a variety of complex reasons. At the same time for a democratic state the fact of protest is not necessarily an indication of the failure of the political but can be a sign of the vitality and health of the constitutional life of a state – free expression and assembly are core rights which are invoked and ought to be upheld by protest.

In legitimate protest we glimpse the foundational engagement of our political association – popular causes – that foster a sense of common ground; so many constitutional states often forge their first breath within the ferment of protest and in the UK we can come face to face with the historical contingency of our freedom (Chartism, suffrage, employment rights and equality) by reflecting on the history of protest and its milestones. Protest then is paradoxical in character – it can emerge out of the feelings of rage at the political democratic process for its failures to address a burning concern, but it is also the sign of life, health and perhaps progress within a democratic political community.

The paradox facing the state around protest finds its way into the legal architecture as the fair balance between the state as the ‘policer’ of law and order and the state as ‘guarantor’ of the civil rights of freedom of association and assembly. How do we expect the balance to be struck was one of the key issues and concerns surrounding the decision of the High Court (13 Feb 2026) in the high-profile Palestine Action case.

In the early hours of 20 June 2025 several activists of Palestine Action, a direct-action protest group founded in 2020, broke into the RAF base at Brize Norten and spray painted two aircraft causing serious damage. In response, the Home Secretary decided to proscribe the organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000 as ‘concerned in terrorism’.

A terrorist organisation is defined as one that engages in, prepares, promotes or encourages terrorism, which in turn requires (1) a serious violation against a person, serious damage to property (as in this case), or similar, or the threat thereof; (2) which is designed to influence the government or intimidate the public; (3) for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause. Most of the 84 organisations so far proscribed under the Act are extremist organisations engaged in high levels of violence, typically Islamist extremists and white supremacists, and indisputably terrorist. There was significant outcry that the activities of Palestine Action should be aligned to those of such terrorist organisations.

The government decision seemed to be a reaction to the Brize Norten incident, but Palestine Action had been on its radar since 2024. There had been an escalating series of incidents targeting arms manufacturers in the UK linked to Isreal, such as Thales, a French space and defence corporation, and Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest armament company, each time involving serious damage to property.  

As consequence of the group’s proscription (ban), it also became a criminal offence to offer or express opinion in support of it. In the months that followed more than 2000 supporters had been arrested for holding banners in support of Palestine Action, attracting the attention of media both in this country and around the world and prompting concern as to the health of the right to protest in the UK.

Huda Ammori, one of the founders of Palestine Action, brought a challenge against the government’s decision to ban the organisation. The High Court decision constitutes the opening salvo in what is likely to attract further litigation. It decided that the Home Secretary’s determination was unlawful but declined to quash the order – meaning that Palestine Action remains banned (presumably pending the outcome of further legal action). It leaves things in legal limbo, especially for those that have already been arrested.

Taking the activities of Palestine Action as a whole and including the most violent and high-profile instances met the threshold of the statutory test for proscription. The court also noted that Palestine Action was not engaged in civil disobedience, as set out in Cuadrilla Bowland Limited v Persons Unknown (2020), given that the activities of the group were unrestrained, dangerous and criminal in nature. So, the outcome of this case is not a vindication of Palestine Action or its methods.

Even though the statutory terrorism test was met, it does not necessarily mean that Palestine Action should have been proscribed. The ‘policy’, devised by the Secretary of State, is to determine whether it is proportionate and necessary to proscribe the organisation. As the High Court explained, the core of the policy for exercising her discretion is that ‘not all organisations that meet the concerned terrorism requirement should be proscribed.’

The court found that the reason behind the proscription was to subject Palestine Action to the criminal consequences of the proscription which would be severe enough to disrupt or prevent the group from continuing. As these consequences would always and inevitably be the effect of proscription this could not, in the court’s view, be considered a relevant factor within the policy.

If this seems like rather a narrow basis to hold that the determination was unlawful, the court was somewhat more expansive in the consideration of the proportionality of proscription in relation to Article 10 and 11 rights in the Human Rights Act 1998, freedom of association and freedom of assembly. Once proscription has taken place there is obviously a considerable interference with Articles 10 and 11 rights given that it prevents any further protest, activity or support.

On this point the court considered that the activities of Palestine Action had ‘not yet reached the level, scale and persistence that would justify the application of the criminal law measures that are the consequence of proscription’ – even though the court acknowledged that Palestine Action had been involved in unrestrained and disproportionate criminal activity, and not civil disobedience. In other words, even if the Home Secretary had followed her policy on proscription, it would still fail the proportionality test when it came to the rights protected by the HRA.

Usually on national security issues, such as this, the court would adopt a more deferential attitude to the view of the executive on where the balance lies. Thus, it is important that – in terms of the wider architecture of protest and civil liberties – the court adopted an independent view regarding the fair balance, given that proscription can (as in this case) have a significant impact on the enjoyment of convention rights. How far this analysis of the balance will be upheld in subsequent litigation remains to be seen.

In this wider sense the ruling can be viewed as taking a tentative step to protect this understanding of the place of protest by recognising that the law ought to adopt a sceptical attitude to powers of proscription. It set a reasonably questioning approach for the executive to show that a fair balance is in fact attained when it comes to the limitations of rights of freedom of assembly and association. It is only right that the courts should be willing to check the powers of the executive in this way so that anti-terrorism legislation cannot be used to unlawfully suppress the conduct of political debate and the legitimate rights associated with it.

At the heart of this debate about civil disobedience and protest we see the contours of a much more deep-seated issue of constitutional life. The authority of the state is not something that exists independently of the individual’s moral perspective. Rather, it is also grounded in the willingness of the state to protect the capacity and exercise of personal moral judgment. Any claim that the State has the right to command, and that citizens have a duty to obey, ultimately rests on creating a space for moral judgements in relation to the law as part and parcel of the wider claim of the law that it rests on reason rather than simply an act of will. This principle implies that the moral autonomy of judgement is not external to law but internal to it. The very idea that a law can bind us presupposes that we are the kind of agents who can understand, interpret, and morally assess reasons for compliance. A citizen is not merely a passive recipient of commands but an active participant in determining whether those commands carry legitimate authority and is not simply an act of coercion. The place of protest and its legal protection is one such constitutional space that serves this purpose within constitutional life and as such infringements on it must be viewed critically and limitations on it examined cautiously. It is within this wider spirit that we must look at the current case regarding the proscription of Palestine Action.