Zack Polanski has said he will not attempt to overturn the Green Party's "Zionism is racism" motion, telling the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that the policy would stand until 2028 even though he wants to amend it.
"I'm not going to try to overturn it," the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales said, in remarks reported by the BBC. He said he wanted to change the motion "at the first available opportunity" but that this could not happen until 2028.
The statement settles, for now, the question of whether Polanski would use his position to reverse a conference decision he did not vote on and has publicly criticised. It comes a fortnight after the motion passed in Brighton, prompting Israel to bar him from entering the country, the Prime Minister to rule out working with the Greens while it stands, and the European Green Party to distance itself from its British sister party.
Polanski's objection is to the motion's single-state position. "I want to move away from one state, towards saying that Israelis and Palestinians should decide that future for themselves," he said, according to the Jewish Chronicle's account of the interview.
He rejected the suggestion that the policy itself was divisive. "The first thing I'd say is I don't think this is actually controversial," he said, as reported by Brit Brief. "I think what's controversial is that 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered in the last few years, including more child amputees than ever in modern history." He gave no source for the figure on air.
Challenged on division within the party, he said: "You say it's controversial in the party, but actually there was polling that showed the vast majority of Green voters from 2024 support this policy." He did not identify the pollster or the question asked.
The 2028 timetable is Polanski's own account of the party's procedures. He has been reported as saying conference decisions cannot be revisited for two years. GB News likewise reported that, due to party rules, the motion will remain policy until at least 2028.
The motion, titled "Zionism is Racism" and proposed by Lubna Speitan, passed on 4 October by 1,022 votes to 813. It declares the Greens "an anti-Zionist party" and supports "the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine". Its text says it is aimed at "the political ideology and practice of Zionism, as defined, and not at the religious or ethnic background of those who may identify as Zionists".
Conference rejected an amendment that would have barred the motion from being used to "pressure, proscribe or discipline members based on affiliation with Jewish community institutions". The party has since said the motion has "no impact on membership conditions or internal disciplinary processes".
Polanski was not in the hall for the vote. He left Brighton after his speech on 2 October to campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, where he finished second to Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali on 8 October with 8,928 votes to her 12,292.
Four of the party's five MPs, including the former co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, opposed the motion. The former leader Caroline Lucas spoke against it from the floor. The Jewish Chronicle reported that Polanski said in the days after the by-election that he would not have voted for the motion unamended.
The reaction outside the party was swift. Israel's foreign ministry announced on the evening of the vote that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar had barred Polanski from entering Israel "as a first step", describing the resolution as "a clear antisemitic text according to the IHRA definition".
The Movement for Progressive Judaism said: "The Green Party has made antisemitism party policy and become a racist party." The Board of Deputies, the Community Security Trust and the Jewish Leadership Council had written to the party before the vote warning that the motion would make it "the first electorally significant UK political party in living memory to adopt what appears to be an overtly antisemitic political platform".
Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the Commons at Prime Minister's Questions on 14 October: "It is wrong, it is antisemitic, and this side of the House will have nothing to do with it."
The European Green Party said the day after the vote that the resolution "goes against our agreed positions of the EGP and its Member Parties, therefore as EGP we unequivocally distance ourselves from it".
Polanski, who is Jewish, said in the interview that his party remained united on Gaza. "If you talk about what's happening in Palestine right now, people are dying every single day, and my party is unified in saying this government is still arming that genocide," he said, according to the Jewish Chronicle. Israel denies the allegation of genocide.
The Green Party has not said whether any route exists to amend the motion before 2028.
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