London, Thanasis Gavos

A meeting of the emergency response committee, known as Cobra, will be held in London today amid concerns that war in the Middle East is increasing the chances of a terrorist attack on British soil.

The meeting will be chaired by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, while Homeland Security Minister Suella Braverman will be present. The heads of the national security services and the police will discuss the situation with them.

The meeting comes after London’s Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Mark Rowley, warned that developments in Israel and Gaza were having a serious impact on British soil.

Speaking to Sky News, Sir Mark said the police were facing a “particularly difficult time” with frequent pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protests, a sharp rise in anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and other hate crimes, but also fueling tensions by actors acting on behalf of Iran.

“When you have state threats from Iran, then you have an acceleration of terrorism from incidents and hate crimes in local communities. For the Jewish communities we are now talking about a 14-fold increase in cases of anti-Semitism in London and for the Muslim communities they have almost tripled. So this is a really precarious situation. And in the middle of all this we have these big protests,” said Britain’s senior police official.

So far in London there have been almost 100 arrests for offenses in the context of tensions and reactions to developments in the Middle East. Sir Mark Rowley has predicted that “many more arrests” will be made next week as the Metropolitan Police hunts down protesters who are believed to have breached public order or incitement to terrorism laws during the recent protests.

Five arrests were made at the large pro-Palestine demonstration in central London on Saturday, leading to prosecutions for offenses such as posting a racist slogan and assaulting and causing bodily harm to a police officer.

The British government, led by the Home Secretary, and the British police have opened a debate on possible changes to the law so that there is an expanded possibility of arresting protesters who use controversial slogans or symbols at anti-Israel events.

Britain’s security alert level remains at ‘major’, meaning a terrorist attack is considered ‘likely’. It has been at this level since February 2022, when it was downgraded from the top tier of the “severe” alert level, when an attack is considered “extremely likely.”