Politics
Police ‘fabricating the law’ over Tatchell ‘intifada’ arrest
Police have bailed 74 year-old human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell “under investigation” to attend Charing Cross police station at 1pm on 1 March. His bail condition bans him from attending any Palestine protest. He said:
Met Police seem to be acting under pressure from a foreign regime, the Israeli government, and from Netanyahu supporters in the UK. They want to restrict criticism of Israel’s genocide and suppress support for the right of Palestinians to resist occupation.
Tatchell’s placard
Police arrested the veteran campaigner in Aldwych, at the national Palestine solidarity march in London on 31 January. The arrest was for carrying a placard that read:
Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.
On his arrest, police handcuffed him and took him by van out of London, to Sutton police station in Surrey. This was despite cells being available at Brixton. Tatchell commented:
From my arrest at 1.26pm to my release at 1.40am the next day, I was in police custody a total of 12 hours without charge, including ten hours in the cells for what is a minor alleged public order offence. It was an unjustified and excessively prolonged detention.
Police claim the placard was a ‘racially aggravated’ offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act which criminalises the display of:
signs that are threatening or abusive, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm, or distress.
‘The word intifada is not a crime’
Tatchell said:
The police allegation is nonsense. My placard was not threatening or abusive and did not mention anyone’s race.
The police are fabricating the law. They claim the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in UK law. The police are suppressing free speech without legal justification.
Even if people disagree with the words on my placard, in a free and democratic society they should not be criminalised.
This is just the latest example of officers restricting and criminalising peaceful protests.
The Arab word intifada means uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.
By ‘non-violent resistance’ I was advocating boycott, sanction and divestment – the same tactics that helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa.
’Globalise the intifada’ means create a worldwide campaign like the anti-apartheid movement.
The police are totally wrong to conflate support for Palestinian resistance to oppression with hatred and attacks on Jews.
Palestinians have a right to resist Israeli settlers who are terrorising their villages on the West Bank, beating them and burning their homes, cars, livestock and crops.
Over 400 Gazans have been killed by Israel since the current ceasefire began last October.
At a London rally in December 2025, three people were charged with this new ‘crime’ of expressing support for an intifada against Israel’s war crimes and mass killing of civilians, including 20,000 Palestinian children.
I have a long history of defending Jewish people against the antisemitism of the far right and Islamist extremism. I joined the March Against Antisemitism, with the Chief Rabbi and thousands of Jewish people, on 26 November 2023, just after the 7 October massacre.
This is my 104th arrest or detention by the police in my 59 years of human rights campaigning.
I am currently taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police over my arrest on the Palestine solidarity march on 17 May 2025. I was arrested for a ‘racially and religiously aggravated offence’ – namely displaying a placard that condemned Israel’s ‘genocide’ and Hamas’s execution of Palestinian critics. It read:
‘STOP Israel genocide! STOP Hamas executions! Odai Al-Rubai, aged 22, executed by Hamas! RIP!’
This placard did not mention anyone’s race or religion. The police have since admitted that I was wrongly arrested and I am awaiting a settlement.
Featured image via Jacky Summerfield