UK government urged to designate Palestinian group as terror organisation

The UK government is facing renewed calls to designate the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) organisation as a terror group  after leading members celebrated the October 7th Hamas terror attack, and flyers linked to the organisation were distributed on a UK university campus.

The PFLP is currently proscribed by the European Union, the US, Canada and Japan, but as a result of a Brexit loophole is no longer banned in the UK.

Earlier this month communal organisations including the Jewish Leadership Council expressed outrage after Leila Khaled, who hijacked two planes as a member of the group, and claimed that Hamas militants who carried out the October 7 attacks were “freedom fighters”, was scheduled to address an event in Birmingham via video link.

Grassroots campaign group We Believe In Israel also obtained information through a freedom of information request showing the PFLP were promoted on the campus at Essex University at exactly the same time as the antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party in February 2019.

Luke Akehurst, Director of We Believe in Israel, said: “It’s absurd that a terrorist group like PFLP, which has celebrated the 7th October massacres, is not banned in the UK, and has been able to distribute flyers on a university campus. The Government needs to get its act together and ban this and other terror groups.”

Andrew Percy, a Conservative MP, also recently called for the government to move to ban the PFLP saying: “If we’re going to follow through with what we’re saying in terms of getting tough on radicalisation, this is exactly the sort of group that should be proscribed.”

The PFLP was established in 1967 in an amalgamation of three different guerrilla groups by the militant Palestinian leader George Ḥabash.

The PFLP has routinely employed terror methods against civilians, including suicide bombings, shootings, and assassinations. They were the first Palestinian organisation to hijack aeroplanes in the 1960s and 1970s have long been linked to the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre in which 26 people were killed.

In 2014 the PFLP claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem synagogue massacre in which four Jewish worshippers and a policeman were killed with axes, knives, and a gun.

They also claimed responsibility for a 2015 attack in which Palestinians in a car opened fire on a passing Israeli vehicle. Four people were injured; one was severely injured and died the next day in hospital.

Israeli police also suspect PFLP involvement in the 2019 murder of 17-year-old Jewish teenager Rina Shnerb.

The Home Office told Jewish News that whilst the government keeps the list of proscribed organisations under review, they do not comment on whether a specific organisation is or is not being considered for proscription.