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Palestine campaigners claim arms factory injunction win

PRO-PALESTINE protesters celebrated victory yesterday as the High Court scrapped an injunction stopping them protesting at an Israeli-owned drone factory.

Activists said they would now be able to go after Elbit Systems’s Shenstone factory in Staffordshire with “even more energy.”

War on Want’s Ryvka Barnard told the Star: “It would have been shameful for people to be criminalised for protesting against the sale of arms that are killing Palestinians.

“It just shows the depths Elbit will stoop to in order to protect the profits they make from the sale of deadly drones.

“We welcome the news that the judge has binned this draconian injunction and will keep up the fight for an immediate two-way arms embargo between the UK and Israel.”

The injunction was originally placed on the Shenstone site after hundreds demonstrated at the factory in July in memory of the more than 2,000 Palestinians slaughtered during Israel’s so-called Operation Protective Edge on Gaza last year.

A spokesman for Block the Factory, the coalition organising protests outside Shenstone, said: “This injunction should never have been imposed.

“It’s Elbit Systems and its arms factories that should be facing a ban, not our protests.

“[The] decision will bring even more energy to our campaigning in solidarity with ongoing Palestinian resistance.”

Elbit Systems is estimated to make 85 per cent of the drones used by the Israeli army.

The Shenstone factory is one of four sites owned by the arms manufacturer in Britain.

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