Police and security services have been told by Rishi Sunak to prepare for the prospect of a terror attack amid tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

The Prime Minister chaired an emergency meeting of Cobra on Monday, where ministers, police chiefs and security officials assessed the “accelerated” threat from domestic terrorism and the risk of public disorder.

He has asked police and security agencies to ensure they are taking steps to prepare for public disorder and terrorist attacks by war-gaming scenarios in “table top” exercises. Ministers are concerned rising community tensions could see a single incident spiral into wider violence.

Mr Sunak has also ordered all government departments to review their links to external organisations to ensure no funds are going to any individuals or bodies that have “expressed sympathy” with terrorism.

It follows a 50,000-strong pro-Palestinian protest in the capital at the weekend, where there were calls for an intifada from “London to Gaza”, a display of a blood-soaked effigy of a dead baby and chants of “Khaybar, Khaybar” in reference to a seventh-century mass slaughter of Jews. Five people were charged by the Metropolitan Police with public order offences.

On Monday, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, who also attended Cobra, branded the pro-Palestine protests of the past three weekends as “hate marches”.

Mrs Braverman said she would not hesitate to change the terror laws “if there’s a need” to combat “utterly odious bad actors” who were exploiting gaps in the legislation to stir anti-Semitism.

Attack ‘likely’

She confirmed that there was an “accelerated” terror threat as a result of the Israel-Hamas conflict but said the national terror threat level was still at “substantial,” which means an attack is likely, and had not been raised to severe, where an attack is judged “highly likely.”

“We have seen over the last few weekends, tens of thousands of people take to the streets following the massacre of Jewish people, the single largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, chanting for the erasure of Israel from the map,” Mrs Braverman told Sky News.

“To my mind, there is only one way to describe those marches, they are hate marches.”

She said police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were operationally independent, which meant it was not her role to provide a “running commentary” on their decisions in real time on the ground.

‘Operating beneath criminal threshold’

“What the police have made clear is that they are concerned that there are a large number of bad actors who are deliberately operating beneath the criminal threshold in a way that you or I or the vast majority of the British people would consider to be utterly odious,” she said.

“We keep our laws under review. If there is a need to change the law, just as we did in relation to Just Stop Oil protests, I will not hesitate to act.”

She stressed it was up to police to make decisions about whether to arrest protesters but she added: “These are hate marches and the police must adopt a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism.”

‘Some pretty toxic messages’

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has urged the Government to consider closing gaps in the laws which he says enable extremist groups to steer around the legislation and propagate “some pretty toxic messages.” He has previously called for a new law to define and tackle “hateful extremism”.

Government sources said it would keep its definition of extremism under review but that the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) should do everything possible to ensure they were using all their existing powers to arrest and prosecute to the full force of the law.

Earlier on Monday the Prime Minister’s official spokesman had warned that protesters’ chants like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” were “deeply offensive” and called for people to act responsibly.

“People need to think extremely carefully about the impact of their actions following a traumatic terror event that saw more than 1,000 people killed,” he said.

Andy McDonald, the MP for Middlesbrough, was suspended later on Monday by the Labour Party after he used the phrase “between the river and the sea” during a speech at a pro-Palestine rally at the weekend.