Activists from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the charity War on Want will be banned from Israel as part of its campaign against pro-boycott advocates, according to the newspaper Ha’aretz.

The PSC and War on Want were among 20 international organisations which also included the Friends of El Aqsa and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign on a “blacklist” drawn up by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry.

“We have shifted from defence to offence,” Gilad Erdan, the Strategic Affairs Minister was quoted as saying.

According to the newspaper, leading members of the blacklisted organisations will be denied entry to Israel as well as those who take part in delegations organised by them.

The left-wing American group, Jewish Voice for Peace, is also on the list.

Asad Rehman, executive director of War on Want, condemned the Israeli move as a "desperate attempt to silence a growing movement that is holding Israel to account for its systematic abuse of Palestinian rights and persistent violations of international law".

He said it was "typical of Israel’s ongoing repression of the Palestinian people" and called on the UK government to "condemn this latest crackdown on human rights defenders". 

The blacklist,  he added, was "a repressive tactic borrowed from the same playbook used by the apartheid regime in South Africa when it tried to censor critics". 

On its website, War on Want has said the catastrophe facing the Palestinians is a “defining global justice issue”.

Eight years ago the charity published a report supporting the “call from Palestinian civil society to build a global movement of boycott”.

The PSC protested last March when its chairman Hugh Lanning was deported from Israel a week after the country passed a law to ban supporters of BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions).