The Nakba continues through genocide, war crimes and criminalising resistance
- Today marks 78 years since the Nakba - the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland
- On 30 March 2026, the Israeli Knesset legalised death by hanging for offences classified as "terrorism related" - a racist law devised by genocidal security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that applies only to Palestinians.
- The UK's proscription of Hamas in 2021 criminalises solidarity with Palestinian resistance and renders the British public complicit in the denial of Palestinian self-determination
- Riverway Law filed a landmark legal application to de-proscribe Hamas in April 2025; CAGE International filed its own application in June 2025.
- The Resist Occupation, Demand De-proscription campaign, has been launched today by Sawtuna, following the Riverway to the Sea and CAGE applications.
London — The Nakba was not an isolated event, but rather the beginning of a very intentional process that has never paused or relented, because the international community has consistently provided it with military, financial and political cover.
Seventy-eight years on, that process finds its latest expression in genocide. On the lower end of the estimate, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Yet the structures that sustain this violence in its diplomatic, military, economic, and legal forms, remain largely intact across Western governments - including the UK.
What has changed is the degree to which those structures are now being deployed against the resistance of the majority of people to stifle such dissent.
Israel's proposed execution law targeting Palestinians, provides a legal basis for its extra judicial murders over many. It is consistent with the continued Nakba - a process of dehumanisation designed to render Palestinian life legally disposable. The Nakba forced Palestinians from their homes and land, and this law is designed to kill any Palestinians who resist.
Across Western nations, the same logic operates through different mechanisms. Terror legislation functions as an instrument of political control, deployed to delegitimise dissent, and in the context of Palestine, it criminalises Palestinian identity itself and the expression of solidarity with Palestinians and their resistance. The proscription of Hamas does not protect the British public, but rather forces their complicity. It makes it a criminal offence to engage with the political representation of a people living under occupation and genocide, and it hands the state a legal instrument to pursue those who do.
Historically, the British state engaged with the political wings of anti-colonial movements - the ANC, Sinn Féin - as a necessary condition for any political resolution. The proscription of Hamas forecloses that possibility, and does so by design.
This same pattern has repeated itself in multiple forms. In the state campaigns against those who have the courage to speak the truth to power including the high-profile cases of Majid Freeman. The Filton 24. Fahad Ansari. The law is designed to silence those who sympathise with the oppressed victims of the ongoing genocide. Every facet of the state, mainstream media and law enforcement bodies are geared to target, blacklist and victimise any opposition to the racist apartheid Israeli state and its vocal supporters.
The right to resist occupation is recognised under international law and embodied in the history of every liberation struggle. Stripping Palestinians and those who support their right to resist is itself an act of erasure, the Nakba by other means.
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