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A high-profile criminal trial unfolding at London’s Woolwich Crown Court this week has seen two Palestine Action defendants outline their motivations for a 2024 raid on an Israeli-owned arms factory near Bristol, as the prosecution detailed serious injuries sustained by a responding police officer.

Six activists — Charlotte Head, 29, Jordan Devlin, 31, Fatema Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, Samuel Corner, 23, and Leona Kamio, 30 — are currently facing joint charges of criminal damage linked to the August 2024 break-in at a facility owned by Elbit Systems, a major Israeli defense manufacturer. 23-year-old Corner faces an additional count of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, stemming from allegations that he struck a police officer with a sledgehammer during the incident.

Giving testimony under cross-examination from lead defense counsel Rajiv Menon KC on Tuesday, Head openly acknowledged her intentional participation in the raid, stating she entered the facility with the explicit goal to “destroy as many weapons as possible and shut the site down”. Jurors were shown photographic evidence of damaged military hardware, which Head identified as including a battle simulator and military quadcopter drones.

In a pre-trial statement recorded in December 2025, Head explained the group’s strategy: activists were instructed to target military equipment first, and flood restricted areas they could not access to inflict maximum damage within their available window. While Head confirmed she damaged property that did not belong to her, she emphasized that she and her co-defendants held a sincere belief their actions were legally justified on moral and political grounds.

Head went on to trace her activist roots back to volunteer work supporting refugees in Calais when she was 19, where she said she witnessed firsthand violent assaults on asylum seekers by French police, including an incident where a child was blinded by police fire. Raised with a core value of compassion instilled by her mother and grandmother, Head told the court she repeatedly tried to step away from the high-stakes work but could not abandon people in crisis. In the years following her Calais experience, she became deeply involved in anti-war organizing, describing her work not as ideological grandstanding, but as a necessary effort to prevent civilian harm.

Two months before the Elbit raid, Head joined a protest camp outside Hackney Town Hall calling on the local council to divest its pension fund from investments linked to Israel and the global arms industry. She told the court she participated in a formal deputation to push for the policy change, but labeled the entire process a “farce” that left her feeling completely powerless. Frustrated by years of incremental activism that she described as a “sticking plaster” that produced no tangible change, Head said she felt repeated, polite requests for action had been entirely ineffective, leaving her demoralized. By the time she agreed to join the August 6 raid, she told the court, “I had tried everything else. At this point, it felt like I was watching all this awful stuff happen online, and I can’t live with myself if I don’t do everything that I can.”

On Wednesday, the court heard testimony from Corner, an Oxford University linguistics and philosophy graduate who was preparing to apply for a master’s degree at the time of the incident. Like Head, Corner confirmed he entered the factory intending “to destroy weapons and things needed to make weapons, which we believed were going to be used to cause death and destruction” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Corner, who has diagnosed autism spectrum disorder and ADHD, told the court he struggles to recall details of past events or his emotional state during high-stress, overwhelming situations, and struggles to think quickly under pressure.

Both Corner and Head told the court the group had been assured by experienced Palestine Action activists that security guards would not intervene during the raid, matching the pattern of previous protests the group has carried out. After the group rammed through the facility’s shutters with a stolen prison van to gain entry, Corner said he immediately felt out of his depth and underprepared for what he encountered inside.

The court then heard details of the confrontation with responding officers. Jurors were shown body-worn camera footage that captured PC Aaron Buxton firing Pava incapacitant spray directly at Corner, who told the court the chemical hit him square in the face. He described being blinded, suffering overwhelming pain across his face, eyes and hands as he tried to walk away from the confrontation, unable to open his eyes. Additional footage showed Buxton struggling to detain Devlin, with Corner appearing to approach the officer from above and swing a sledgehammer at him. Further footage captured PC Peter Adams tasering Kamio, who can be heard screaming that officers were hurting her severely.

Corner told the court he could only vaguely make out shapes and hear the screams of his co-defendants as they struggled with security and police, describing a chaotic scene full of loud alarms, strong chemical fumes, and overwhelming stress. He said he feared his co-defendants, particularly the smaller-built Rogers, were being seriously injured. When asked about the allegation that he struck PC Kate Evans twice in the back as she attempted to arrest Rogers, Corner said he has no memory of the incident. He flatly denied ever intending to use his sledgehammer against any person, telling the court: “I wasn’t trying to cause any serious harm to anyone. It wasn’t something I ever saw myself doing or being arrested for or associated with.”

Under cross-examination from prosecutor Deanna Heer KC, Corner acknowledged that before the raid, when he was calm and lucid, he understood that a sledgehammer strike against a person could cause severe injury. But he explained that during the confrontation, he was panicking, in severe pain from the Pava spray, and that the potential for harm to other people was not something he had capacity to think through in the moment. “That wasn’t the plan. That’s not something you do in a situation that isn’t absolutely desperate and when you don’t have time to think,” he said. Defense counsel Tom Wainwright noted that Corner told police after his arrest that he was only acting to protect his co-defendants.

The prosecution outlined the severe harm Evans sustained in the attack. She told the court last week that after being struck, she felt the impact radiate across her entire body, and feared she had been paralyzed. Colleague PC Adams testified that Corner struck Evans with significant force. Evans was unable to return to work for three months after the incident, and continues to experience daily chronic pain that requires her to work restricted duties. Heer confirmed Evans suffered a confirmed fracture to the transverse process of her fourth lumbar vertebra, with probable additional fractures to the second and third lumbar vertebrae on her right side.

The trial of the six Palestine Action activists remains ongoing, with more evidence expected to be presented in coming days.

For decades, the annual March of Return has served as a cornerstone of collective action for Palestinians residing within Israel, drawing tens of thousands of participants each year to honor displaced communities and reaffirm their ties to ancestral land. But in 2024, sweeping restrictions imposed by Israeli police forced organizers to completely reimagine the event, transforming the traditional large central gathering into a sprawling network of small, localized tours to dozens of depopulated Palestinian villages.

The annual commemoration marks the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – the 1948 displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by Zionist militias during the establishment of the state of Israel, which left hundreds of Palestinian communities destroyed and emptied. For participating Palestinians, these annual gatherings are far more than a memorial: they are a deliberate act of resistance against ongoing efforts to erase Palestinian cultural and historical identity, organizers say.

Negotiations over the event began three months in advance, according to Khaled Awad, spokesperson for the Association for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced, one of the event’s lead organizing groups. Awad explained that Israeli police initially refused all dialogue with event organizers, issuing explicit warnings that the march would be forcibly dispersed if it moved forward in its traditional format. In response, the association partnered with legal rights group Adalah to file a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court, which ultimately compelled police to enter formal negotiations.

Even after talks began, Awad said organizers faced persistent bureaucratic delays and constantly shifting requirements from law enforcement. The final agreement imposed two major constraints: a hard cap of 1,000 total participants across the entire event – a limit Awad called deeply unreasonable, given that tens of thousands have attended in past years – and a total ban on all Palestinian flags and national symbols, with police justifying the ban on the grounds that such imagery could “provoke unrest.”

Organizers took the warnings of police intervention seriously, as the march has long drawn intergenerational crowds including young children and elderly participants. “We are talking about a space where people come with their children,” Awad noted, adding that organizers prioritized participant safety above all. By the time final approvals were issued, just days before the scheduled event, coordinating a large central gathering was no longer logistically feasible. The decision was made to shift to a decentralized model of small, location-specific tours.

In total, organizers arranged more than 30 separate tours to depopulated village sites across the Galilee and northern Israel, including the former communities of al-Damun, Miar, Maalul, al-Lajjun, and Miska. Turnout varied across locations, with some gatherings drawing only a few dozen participants while others attracted hundreds. The largest gathering, held at al-Damun, drew hundreds of attendees, while smaller sites like Miska hosted around 70 people, mostly family members and descendants of the villages’ original displaced residents.

Among the attendees at Miska was 88-year-old Abu Amjad Shbita, who was forced to flee the village as a child during the 1948 violence and now resides in nearby Tira. Shbita recalled that residents left after warnings from the Arab Liberation Army, as news of Zionist attacks on neighboring villages spread widespread panic. “We left thinking we would come back,” he told the gathered crowd. In the decades that followed, surviving residents of Miska were dispersed across Israel and the broader region, and the village was completely destroyed in the early 1950s. “There is no place without someone from Miska,” Shbita said, adding that the destruction of the village marked the permanent end of his childhood.

The annual commemoration of the Nakba falls each year at the same time as Israel’s celebration of its national independence, a juxtaposition that underscores the competing historical narratives at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Palestinians, even small, scattered visits to destroyed village sites carry profound weight, serving as a way to preserve collective memory and pass intergenerational stories of displacement and connection to the land down to younger generations.

For Jasmine Shbita, a third-generation descendant of Nakba displaced persons, returning to the ruins of destroyed villages is both an act of memory and imagination. “I keep trying to imagine it as a living place,” she said, explaining that she often visualizes what the village would look like today if it had never been destroyed. Even without physically rebuilding Palestinian communities on the land, she noted, the act of returning and sharing stories holds lasting power. “Even if I don’t build a house, just passing this story to my children means I’ve done my part,” she said. “There is no complete destruction. There are always ruins, and people return to them and try to rebuild meaning from them.”

Though the format of the 2024 March of Return differs dramatically from traditional gatherings, organizers and participants agree that the core message of the event remains unchanged: the ancestral connection of Palestinians to the land of their former communities, and their longstanding demand for the right of return, endures regardless of the scale of the annual gathering.

In the narrow back alleys of Foshan, one of China’s busiest manufacturing hubs, a group of weary workers huddle under a dusty tree, their expressions etched with anxiety. Storefront signs advertising short-term factory positions line the street behind them, but few workers here hold steady, well-paying jobs. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, the workers share the harsh reality of their daily struggles. “No one understands what our life is like,” one middle-aged worker murmurs. Another adds a desperate, rare plea to a visiting foreign reporter: “We work endless hours and have no life of our own. Please help us.”

These workers have long navigated the seismic shifts reshaping China’s industrial sector, as the country moves away from low-cost mass manufacturing toward automated high-tech production. Many older, less skilled workers have already been left adrift, struggling to earn enough to support families back in rural hometowns. But their precarious situation has worsened dramatically since the US-Israel conflict with Iran erupted, sending new shockwaves through an already fragile Chinese economy.

Long before the Middle East conflict ignited, China’s economy was grappling with mounting pressures: slowing domestic growth, persistent youth unemployment, and lingering ripple effects from former US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs implemented the previous year. Despite official data reporting roughly 5% annual GDP growth and resilient export volumes, public discontent over working conditions and economic uncertainty has continued to simmer beneath the surface. Now, the regional conflict has added a fresh layer of strain, squeezing factory order volumes, pushing up input costs, and eroding already fragile job security.

In Foshan, the best opportunities available to most workers these days are the temporary positions advertised in bright red paint on roadside signs: a few weeks of molding plastic components or assembling smartphone parts for 18 to 20 yuan per hour, a rate that translates to just a few dollars a day. Most workers searching for work here are over 40, and many say they have grown exhausted from constant economic uncertainty. “I’m going to head north to try my luck elsewhere,” one migrant worker from a central Chinese province says, packing his few belongings into a frayed canvas bag.

This widespread economic pain is a core reason Beijing has repeatedly called for an immediate end to the conflict. While China’s strategic investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and its own domestic oil reserves have shielded it from the worst of the global fuel price crisis, the conflict has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—one of the world’s most critical energy and trade chokepoints. For an export-reliant Chinese economy already stuck in low gear, this disruption has translated to widespread pain across industrial supply chains.

An hour’s drive from Foshan, in Guangzhou’s sprawling fabric market—the largest of its kind on the planet—the impact of higher energy costs is already palpable. Motorcycles piled high with brightly colored fabric rolls weave through crowded streets, while small delivery vans honk their way between loading bays serving thousands of small textile traders. Here, every business relies on cheap, stable oil supplies to produce the petrochemical inputs needed to make synthetic fabrics. Traders across the market report that shipping and raw material costs have jumped by roughly 20% since the conflict began.

“Costs go up, but our customers refuse to accept higher prices,” one fabric trader explains over tea in his small back-office storage room. “Orders are drying up, and unsold fabric rolls are piling up in our warehouses. If we don’t pass the extra costs on to buyers, we have to swallow them ourselves—and we’re already working on thinner margins than we can afford.” A year ago, during the height of the US-China trade war, traders here spoke with open defiance against external pressure. Today, there is only quiet resignation.

Amid the widespread uncertainty, however, there are glimmers of opportunity, on display at the annual Canton Fair in Guangzhou, where thousands of Chinese manufacturers welcome global buyers in cavernous exhibition halls. This is the image Beijing is eager to project to the world: a forward-looking innovation hub, showcasing cutting-edge technology while the United States remains mired in Middle East conflict. Humanoid robots wave and sing for visitors taking selfies, long lines form to test AI-powered translation glasses and assistive robotic climbing legs, and everyday consumer goods from stain-clearing smart vacuums to high-end espresso machines draw crowds.

Even here, though, price tags are climbing, due in large part to higher oil-derived plastic input costs. But the conflict has also reinforced one key competitive advantage for Chinese manufacturers: electric vehicles (EVs). Data from the Chinese Passenger Car Association shows that Chinese factories exported 350,000 EVs in March alone—a 30% increase from February and a 140% jump from March of the previous year. EVs have long been one of China’s top exports to the Middle East, but the conflict has disrupted shipping routes, leaving many shipments stranded at Chinese ports.

Joyce Liu, an EV trader at the Canton Fair, explains that her business has been upended by the conflict. “Last year, 90% of our cars went to the Middle East, but this year we’ve almost completely stopped doing business there because of the war,” she says. “Some of our finished vehicles are still waiting for loading at Chinese ports right now.” Liu has come to the fair this year to court new buyers from Africa, South America, and South Asia—and she is not alone. As petrol and diesel prices skyrocket globally, waiting lists for affordable Chinese EVs have grown rapidly in dozens of developing economies.

Even Middle Eastern buyers are still exploring opportunities, despite the conflict. A trade delegation from Oman spent days inspecting EV models at the fair, and ultimately agreed to a new deal, haggling over terms under bright exhibition spotlights beside a banner printed in both English and Arabic. “We are here to build cooperation with Chinese companies,” says Zahir Mohammed Zahir al-Kaabi, a member of the Omani delegation. “Times are hard right now, but Inshallah the war will end soon and business will grow.”

That outcome—an early end to the conflict—is exactly what Beijing is working toward. Analysts note that despite some geopolitical opportunities for China in the conflict, the country is far from emerging as a clear winner. “Ironically, China has long hoped to see a relative decline in US global influence, but this is not the kind of declining US it wanted,” explains Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House. “Beijing would far prefer a more predictable US that is easier to engage and manage.”

Yu adds that Beijing is walking a careful diplomatic line right now, eager to avoid irritating the Trump administration ahead of a scheduled US-China summit in May. “Beijing will do everything it can to keep that meeting on track,” she says. So far, China has taken a measured approach: it has publicly called for an immediate ceasefire, pushed its long-time ally Iran to enter negotiations, and echoed Trump’s own calls for de-escalation, while holding high-level meetings and calls with leadership from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This diplomatic outreach is a deliberate show of soft power, says William Figueroa, a professor of history and international relations at the University of Groningen. “China wants to demonstrate to both the United States and regional partners that it is serious about its commitments in the Middle East—and this message is for a global audience,” he explains. The moment makes clear that China is no longer just the center of the global manufacturing economy; it is increasingly a central player in global geopolitics.

Back in Foshan, though, these global power shifts mean little to the struggling migrant workers scraping by on low wages. One older worker pulls out a Canton Fair entry pass from his pocket, laughing as he takes another drag from a cigarette. He earned 150 yuan—around 20 dollars—for a 14-hour shift cleaning exhibition hall toilets. For him, and for millions of workers like him across China’s industrial heartland, the conflict has only added another layer of uncertainty to a life already defined by hardship.

Escalating geopolitical friction between the United States and Iran has sent ripples across the global economy, and one nation that finds itself navigating a complex mix of challenges and openings is China. In an in-depth analysis from BBC correspondent Laura Bicker, the interconnected nature of global politics and economics means China is not a passive bystander to this regional standoff – it faces tangible economic headwinds even as it could secure quiet strategic advantages.

First and most immediately, the conflict-driven disruption to energy markets has hit China’s bottom line. As the world’s largest crude oil importer, China relies heavily on stable supplies flowing through the Persian Gulf, a region that is immediately impacted by heightened US-Iran hostilities. When tensions spike, global oil prices invariably jump, inflating China’s import bills for energy. These higher costs trickle through the entire Chinese economy, pushing up operating expenses for manufacturers, raising transportation costs for domestic goods, and putting upward pressure on overall inflation. Beyond energy, broader trade routes through the Middle East also face increased risk of disruption, which raises shipping insurance premiums and creates delivery delays for Chinese goods heading to European and Middle Eastern markets, cutting into the competitiveness of Chinese exports.

The political landscape, however, presents a different set of dynamics for Beijing. The ongoing focus of the United States on containing Iranian influence and managing conflict in the Middle East diverts American strategic attention and resources away from its competition with China. For years, the US has prioritized great power competition in the Indo-Pacific, but a sustained crisis with Iran forces the US to split its military, diplomatic and economic focus. This creates space for China to advance its own regional and global strategic goals, from expanding trade relationships across the Middle East through its Belt and Road Initiative to strengthening diplomatic ties with nations that are aligned against US policy in the region. Additionally, China can position itself as a neutral broker for peace between the two sides, burnishing its image as a responsible global power committed to diplomatic de-escalation.

Bicker’s analysis notes that the balance of costs and benefits for China remains deeply dependent on how the conflict evolves. A full-scale, prolonged war would far outweigh any political gains, sending energy prices soaring to unsustainable levels and triggering a global recession that would devastate Chinese export demand. A low-intensity, prolonged standoff, on the other hand, allows China to absorb the limited economic costs while capitalizing on the strategic opportunities that come from a distracted United States.