Two Palestine Action vandals have been hospitalized amid a hunger strike to end their organization’s terrorism proscription, with the matter finishing a three-day judicial review on Tuesday.
Hunger striking activist Tueta Hoxha was hospitalized on Friday, according to an X/Twitter post by Prisoners for Palestine (PFP), which advocates for imprisoned Palestine Action vandals. Hoxha’s reported health deterioration came three days after the hospitalization of fellow striker Kamran Ahmed, according to a Thursday PFP statement.
Hoxha and Ahmed are two of six Palestine Action activists engaged in a hunger strike for the de-proscription of their organization.
In an October 20 letter to the Home Office, PFP warned that a hunger strike would begin if Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems was not expelled from the country and all documents of UK state communications with Israeli and Elbit officials were not published.
The activists also demanded immediate bail while awaiting trial, and unrestricted and surveilled communications from jail. The activists claimed that it had been over a year since they had been arrested without trial.
The hunger strike
The hunger strike began on November 2 to commemorate the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with activists Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib refusing food. They were later joined by Heba Muraisi, Jon Cink, Hoxha, and Ahmed.
Hoxha, Ahmed, Zuhrah, and Muraisi were among the 24 people arrested last November in connection with an August 2024 attack on Elbit Systems UK’s South Gloucestershire Horizon facility. Activists had rammed through the Filton facility’s fence and entrance with a prison van before smashing equipment, machinery, and building fixtures. Armed with sledgehammers, axes, whips, and other homemade weapons, the activists wounded two officers and a security guard in the attack.
Last Monday, bodycam footage of the attack was presented to jurors in a trial of six raid participants, according to Sky News, and a wounded officer testified that she had suffered back injuries after being struck with a sledgehammer. The case for the incident, which the PFP said had caused a million pounds in damages, went to trial on November 18.
Cink and Gib were arrested in relation to a June raid on the Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire, according to Reuters, putting paint into the engines of Voyager aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
Palestine Action said that the attack, which PFP related had caused £7 million in damages, was in response to the UK supposedly flying spy planes over Gaza and sending military cargo to Israel.
The incidents led to then-UK home secretary Yvette Cooper, in July, proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
Activists have since fought to challenge the ban, with frequent protests in support of the group leading to hundreds of arrests for support of a proscribed group.
Huda Ammori, co-founder of the group, which has been responsible for dozens of vandalism incidents and attacks since it was created in 2020, was given the opportunity to challenge the proscription in court last Wednesday as a misuse of terrorism laws.
The hunger strike was Hoxha’s second this year, with a month-long September strike demanding that her mail be released, her prison library job be restored, and she be allocated recreational activities.