Green Party leader Zack Polanski says he will not overturn Zionism motion

Zack Polanski has said he will not overturn a motion passed by Green Party members that declared Zionism a form of racism.

The Green leader told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that, while he would like to make amendments, it would be party policy until 2028.

The motion, passed at the party’s conference earlier this month, described Zionism as an ideology supporting “an ethnonationalist Jewish state in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population”.

It divided the party and sparked a major backlash from MPs, Jewish campaigners, the government and the European Green movement, with the equality watchdog writing to the party for more information on it.

The fallout from the motion overshadowed the final days of Polanski’s campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, in which he came second to Labour, and threatened his leadership.

He came under criticism for not voting on the motion which was passed by 1,022 votes to 813 – a small fraction of the party’s 230,000 members – in Brighton earlier this month.

The motion also asserted the party’s backing for “a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine”, a full arms embargo on Israel and a commitment to Palestinian liberation.

Asked if he would now step in as leader to overturn it, Polanski said: “I’m not going to try to overturn it.

“At the first available opportunity, I do want to amend it – I want to move away from one state, towards saying that Israelis and Palestinians should decide that future for themselves.”

He said this would not be until 2028 as “you can’t [amend it] within the rules, so when you vote on something in our party conference that’s then policy for two years”.

Kuenssberg asked if he would therefore change the rules as leader, but Polanski said: “I think if members have made a decision, then I respect the democratic will of our members.”

Former Green Party co-leader and current MP Adrian Ramsay responded by calling for action to be taken sooner.

“I don’t think it’s tenable for us to continue the next two years with this policy that’s been adopted given the huge political distraction that it’s been for our councillors across the country,” he told the BBC News Channel.

“One way forward could be to have a ballot of all party members to establish very clearly where does the party as a whole stand – my view is we would see a different answer.”

Polanski had previously said he would not have voted for the motion without two amendments.

The first of these would have avoided “determining there was a single democratic state”, and the other would have specified that the motion should not be used to discipline Jewish Green members who attend synagogues that consider themselves Zionist.

Both of these amendments were voted down by members at the party’s conference.

Green MPs, including Ellie Chowns, have called for the party’s member-led decision-making procedures to be reviewed given how few people took part in the vote.