Pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action‘s cofounder has lost a bid to pause the British government’s decision to ban the organisation under “anti-terrorism” laws pending their legal challenge.

Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, had asked London’s High Court to stop the proscription of Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation.

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On Friday, the High Court in London heard a challenge to the order and Judge Martin Chamberlain ruled against Ammori, meaning the proscription of Palestine Action is upheld and will come into force at midnight.

Proscription would make it a crime to be a member of Palestine Action that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Proscribed groups under British law include ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

After the parliamentary vote against the group on Wednesday, critics decried the chilling effect of the ban, which puts Palestine Action on a par with such armed groups.

“Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb isn’t just absurd, it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity, and suppress the truth,” said independent British lawmaker Zarah Sultana.

Palestine Action activists broke into a military base last month and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest at the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Ammori’s lawyer Raza Husain said the proscription marked the first time the UK had sought to ban a group carrying out such direct action, describing it as “an ill-considered, discriminatory, authoritarian abuse of statutory power”.

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Palestine Action describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms industry in the United Kingdom with direct action”. It says it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the UK’s interior minister, has said that violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest and her lawyers say the case should be brought at the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission instead.

Rights groups have accused Israel of repeatedly committing abuses in its war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023. Since then, at least 57,268 Palestinians have been killed and 135,625 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.