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For 70-year-old grandmother Marji Mansfield, every pre-dawn hour between 5 and 7 a.m. brings a wave of crippling fear. Like dozens of other pro-Palestine activists across the United Kingdom, she waits for the knock that British counterterrorism police could leave on her door at any moment, a routine dawn raid that has already upended the lives of nearly 20 peers, many of them elderly.

“It’s been really, really quite scary not knowing when there’s going to be the knock at the door,” Mansfield told independent outlet Middle East Eye in an interview. “This isn’t the Britain that I thought I grew up in at all. We’ve been scared enough to go and sleep elsewhere.” That anxiety spikes whenever her seven grandchildren stay overnight, turning the usually quiet early morning hours into a period of relentless dread.

Mansfield’s ordeal is rooted in a crackdown on Palestine Action, a direct action advocacy group that the UK government formally banned as a proscribed terrorist organization in July 2025. In the months following the proscription, more than 3,000 people have been arrested under the UK Terrorism Act simply for participating in silent vigils held in solidarity with the group. In June of that same year, the Court of Appeal upheld the legality of the ban, overturning an earlier High Court ruling that had questioned the proscription.

Following that ruling, Defend Our Juries (DOJ), the grassroots organization leading the campaign to reverse the ban, called for an escalation of peaceful protest action. The new action encouraged activists to explicitly invite others to support Palestine Action, rather than only voicing personal backing for the group. Under Section 12 of the UK Terrorism Act, this act of invitation can carry a maximum 14-year prison sentence, a far harsher penalty than the Section 13 charge most prior arrestees have faced.

Mansfield was one of roughly 100 activists who answered DOJ’s call, uploading a public video to social media that declared: “Saving lives is not terrorism, I support Palestine Action, and I think you should too.” In the weeks since, 19 of those video uploaders have already been targeted by counterterrorism dawn raids spanning the entire country, from London and the West Midlands to Wales, Scotland, Cornwall and Somerset. Many of those raided are retired seniors.

Activists who have endured the raids describe invasive searches that go far beyond legitimate counterterrorism work. Officers confiscate all personal digital devices, any items bearing Palestinian symbols, and even rifled through private personal diaries. Two activists were handcuffed during their raids, despite official police policy that only permits restraints when officers have objective reason to believe a suspect will attempt escape or cause harm to themselves or others.

For those who have not yet been raided, like Mansfield, the uncertainty of waiting has devastated daily life. Many report persistent insomnia, and activists with ill partners say they avoid leaving their homes out of fear police will raid while they are away. “It really impacts people’s lives. It causes great fear and anxiety,” Mansfield said. Middle East Eye requested comment from UK Counter Terrorism Police ahead of publication, but received no response.

One of those who experienced a raid firsthand is 53-year-old Asghar Ahmad, a former UK government IT worker from Telford, Shropshire. On a late July morning just after 7:30 a.m., he opened his front door to find roughly a dozen officers, one police van, and four police cars parked outside his home.

“I wasn’t challenging anything because I knew what they were going to do. They were going to go through the whole house,” Ahmad recalled. When he asked to put on clothes beyond the shorts he was wearing, an officer followed him upstairs and stayed with him the entire time before he was handcuffed and transported to the local police station. While he was in custody, remaining officers searched every room of his home, seizing all digital devices, old notebooks, and every item connected to Palestine, from flags to wristbands. He was interviewed with his solicitor present and released by 5 p.m. without any charges filed.

Now retired and doing community volunteer work, Ahmad said he spent 38 years focused on his career and building his family, and only felt free to speak out on political issues once he left government service. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said. “If they want to put pensioners in prison, it will not go down well.”

Sixty-four-year-old Paul Gravesbrown, a semi-retired archaeologist living in Powys, described a similarly invasive experience that left him deeply disturbed. Some 20 officers searched his home for six and a half hours, even going through his wife’s teenage diary, leaving it out on top of her belongings to make clear they had read its private contents. “They left the diary on the top, highlighting the fact that they’ve been looking through a teenage girl’s diary, which is a bit creepy,” he said.

Gravesbrown was held for eight hours at a local police station and released without charge. The trauma of the raid has lingered, he said, echoing the violation people feel after a home burglary — an experience he and his wife already endured just before the COVID-19 lockdown. “Being raided is quite traumatic, it’s one of those things which hangs around in your mind,” he said. “Our house was burgled just before the first lockdown, so it’s a similar sort of experience – total strangers wandering around your house.”

Even younger activists face deep lasting harm from the crackdown. Thirty-year-old Staffordshire bartender Allie, who spoke to MEE under a pseudonym for privacy, was arrested shortly after returning home from a late work shift. She was woken at 1 a.m. by loud banging on her front door. “I opened the door and I think the first thing I said was, ‘Oh my God, you actually came,’” she recalled.

Both Allie and Ahmad said officers demanded their device passcodes to unlock their personal electronics, a request that requires formal written notice under Section 49 of the UK Investigatory Powers Act. As she was handcuffed, Allie remarked that the response was excessive for her alleged offense, and officers asked her to sign a formal statement noting her comment. She was held for eight to nine hours at a Birmingham-area police station before being released without charges.

For Allie, the harm of the raid extends far beyond the day of arrest. “I think the worst thing for me is that it really shatters any sense of personal safety,” she said. “You go through life with a belief in the systems that are there to protect you. This is such a heinous overreach and abuse of those systems. I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to fully reconcile myself with it. It’s like having to reconstruct a new reality.”

When Andy Burnham took office as United Kingdom Prime Minister, political observers immediately anticipated a shift in the nation’s approach to Middle East foreign policy. For weeks, that shift has only been visible in subtle shifts in ministerial rhetoric, with no concrete policy changes laid out for the public. That veil of secrecy is set to lift, however, when UK Parliament returns from its summer recess, multiple senior sources across Whitehall and British civil society have confirmed to independent outlet Middle East Eye.

At the top of the slate of proposed policy changes is a long-debated ban on goods imported from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to reporting from MEE, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has emerged as a leading advocate for stricter measures against settlements, holding ongoing consultations with a broad cross-section of civil society organizations to refine the proposal. Senior Foreign Office discussions are currently weighing whether to extend the measures to include legal penalties for UK companies and organizations that maintain business or operational ties to settlements in the occupied territories.

The push for new regulations comes as the Charity Commission, the UK’s independent charity regulator, is already investigating multiple British charities accused of funneling funds to Israeli settlements. Former Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated publicly in June that no UK charity should provide support to settlements, but he refused to commit the government to an official ban on charitable donations to the entities. The Burnham administration, by contrast, is actively exploring a full ban on such donations, insiders confirm.

Beyond trade and charity regulations, the Foreign Office is also evaluating new targeted sanctions against individuals and organizations tied to the aggressive Israeli settler movement in the occupied West Bank. The UK previously imposed sanctions on far-right Israeli cabinet ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich last year, and internal discussions are now centered on expanding that sanctions list to include additional Israeli political figures.

Another high-stakes policy under review is the UK’s controversial arms sales regime to Israel. In September 2024, shortly after taking office, the Starmer government suspended approximately 30 direct export licenses for UK-made military hardware, after an official assessment found a “clear risk” the equipment could be used in Gaza to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law. That suspension included direct exports of UK-manufactured components for F-35 fighter jets, but the Starmer administration carved out a critical exemption for components sent to the global F-35 spare parts pool, even though those parts can ultimately end up in Israeli aircraft. UK-made components account for 15% of every F-35, a advanced fighter jet Israel has deployed heavily throughout its military campaign in Gaza, as well as in strikes on Lebanon and Iran.

The Starmer government defended the exemption, arguing that a full unilateral halt on UK component exports would disrupt the entire global F-35 fleet and threaten broader international security. Starmer also approved $169 million in new military exports to Israel during his tenure, including more than 8,600 separate munitions shipments categorized as “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and other similar munitions.” Senior sources confirm that a full ban on these military exports is now active under discussion within the Burnham government, though no final decision has been reached.

In a statement provided to Middle East Eye on Wednesday, a Foreign Office spokesperson reaffirmed the UK’s long-standing legal position: “Settlements are illegal under international law, undermine the viability of a two-state solution and fuel insecurity for both Palestinians and Israelis. We have given clear advice to UK businesses that they should not engage in economic activity in illegal settlements and warn them of the reputational and potentially legal consequences of any such activities.”

Months before he assumed the premiership in July, Burnham set the stage for this policy shift by issuing a public apology for the Starmer-led Labour Party’s early support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and its refusal to back an immediate ceasefire in 2023 and early 2024. Since taking office, he has faced mounting pressure from Labour Party backbenchers to follow through on campaign-adjacent promises by banning trade with illegal settlements and adopting a firmer stance on Middle East issues.

MEE first reported in November last year that senior Foreign Office ministers had already privately concluded a ban on settlement goods was a desirable policy. Initial discussions on how to implement such a ban actually began in the final months of Starmer’s premiership, and in early July, then-Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer publicly confirmed that UK officials were working through the technical challenges of implementing a ban and coordinating with European Union allies on the issue. Several EU member states, including the Netherlands and Spain, have already implemented their own national bans on settlement goods, with Ireland currently in the process of rolling out its own restrictions.

Insiders note that Burnham has intentionally prioritized rolling out domestic policy initiatives during his first weeks in Downing Street, but last month he publicly confirmed his government is evaluating “further measures to deter unacceptable violence” in the occupied West Bank.

The push for new restrictions has faced pushback from within the Labour Party itself. Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a prominent pro-Israel parliamentary lobby group that counts more than 70 sitting MPs as members, published a report earlier this month that pushed back against a full ban, arguing that some illegal settlement activity is justified and urging the government to abandon the proposal. The LFI report claimed a full trade boycott of all settlements is “practically and politically impossible” and would harm all Israeli businesses operating in major settlement blocs, as well as areas of East Jerusalem and the Old City.

This position stands in stark contrast to the Labour Party’s own stance when it was in opposition. Back in June 2020, then-shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy publicly called for a ban on settlement goods imports, saying the move required “courage that so far ministers have not been willing to show.” The pressure for action also reflects overwhelming grassroots support within the party: polling conducted earlier this year found that 87% of rank-and-file Labour members support a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, with only 6% opposing the measure.