Inside the UK Greens' debate over landmark anti-Zionism motion

UK Green Party members are debating the details of the "Zionism is racism" motion that will be put to a vote on Sunday at their annual conference, with its backers optimistic that the party will formally adopt an anti-Zionist position.

The motion, endorsed by leading advocates of the Palestinian cause, seeks to declare the party opposed to Zionism, which it defines as a racist, settler-colonial ideology.

It defines Zionism as a political ideology seeking the creation and continuation of an ethnonationalist Jewish state in historic Palestine through the exclusion or domination of its non-Jewish population, and says its material consequences have included the dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession and disenfranchisement of Palestinians.

The motion seeks to make opposition to Zionism an explicit Green Party position, while affirming Palestinian self-determination and liberation.

"As a Palestinian, second of all as a human being, thirdly because it's what's right, it's to oppose a racist root core of the ideology behind our erasure as Palestinians," Lubna Speitan, author of the motion, told The New Arab on the sidelines of the party's conference in Brighton.

The motion also calls for support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and embargoes similar to those imposed on apartheid South Africa, as well as the release of Palestinian prisoners and recognition of the right to resistance under international law.

It also supports the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian state across historic Palestine, with equal rights and the right of return, a demand that has emerged as one of the main points of disagreement within the party ahead of Sunday's vote.

The motion was originally submitted to the party's spring conference but was not reached for debate before the conference ran out of time, meaning it was deferred rather than rejected. It has since returned with a record number of supporters and proposed amendments.

Call for a single Palestinian state

Deputy Leader Rachel Millward told The New Arab that while she does not believe the motion will derail the conference, she has reservations about its call for a single Palestinian state.

"It does sort of make really clear that the solution has to be a single Palestinian state -- that I really struggle with that," Millward told The New Arab on the sidelines of the conference.

"It feels a bit imperialist, if I'm honest, for us, the Green Party of England and Wales, to dictate what the outcome of a peace process would be."

While the motion has attracted a record-breaking number of supporters and co-proposers, party leader Zack Polanski called for two amendments, including one to explicitly safeguard Jewish members and another to remove the call for a single state.

Millward argued that the Greens already have a strong platform on Palestine, including being the first major UK party to declare Israel's actions a genocide, as well as backing the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Speitan rejected the suggestion that advocating a single Palestinian state amounts to imposing a solution, arguing that Britain's historical role in Palestine makes the description of the proposal as "imperialist" particularly misplaced.

"'Imperialistic' is the Balfour Declaration that imposed this racist, rogue, settler colony," Speitan said. "It was through the Balfour Declaration here in Britain that they imposed this rogue state upon us and we're simply here talking about the reversal of the wrongs that were committed and imposed upon us."

Jewish Greens said ahead of the conference that its members were divided over the motion, and that the group would not take an official position.

A survey published by Jewish Greens on Friday found that 81% of 108 respondents did not identify as Zionists, while 70 described themselves as anti-Zionist and 70 as non-Zionist, with some identifying as both. The group said there was nevertheless no consensus among its members over whether the motion itself should pass.

'The root of the problem'

For the motion's backers, formally opposing Zionism is central to the proposal rather than simply an addition to the Greens' existing policies on Palestine.

They argue that condemning Israel's actions without confronting the ideology they say has underpinned the dispossession, displacement and dehumanisation of Palestinians fails to address the root of the issue.

Kieran Andrieu, a British Palestinian political economist and supporter of the motion, said the Greens' longstanding commitment to anti-racism should therefore extend to opposition to Zionism.

"I think that it's important to recognise when something is racism and to call it as such. People in this party feel very deeply about Palestine," Andrieu told The New Arab.

"The problem is that we're going to be attending anti-genocide marches for a thousand years unless we're able to actually identify the root of the problem, which is that Palestinians have been systematically dehumanised over more than a century, and the ideology that's dehumanised them is Zionism," Andrieu added.

Not all prominent Greens agree that formally defining Zionism in this way would strengthen the party's position on Palestine.

Caroline Lucas, the party's first MP and its only MP until the 2024 general election, described the motion as "divisive", pointing to disagreements over how Zionism itself is defined.

"I think it's divisive because I don't think there is an agreed definition of Zionism, and I speak as somebody who has been a long-time supporter of the Palestinian cause," Lucas told The New Arab ahead of Polanski's speech at the conference.

"I just think this motion is a distraction; it's unhelpful, it's divisive, and if it does end up with Jewish people feeling unwelcome and feeling even worse, potentially even scared, then I don't think that helps our cause," she said, while acknowledging that for Palestinians, the term represents "the most appalling, colonial, extractive racism".

Supporters of the motion dispute the suggestion that opposition to Zionism should conflict with the party's anti-racist principles, arguing instead that their position is rooted in the historical and continuing Palestinian experience of dispossession.

Speitan also pointed to the record-breaking number of supporters and co-proposers as evidence of the strength of support for the motion within the party.

"The fact that the majority of the party have supported it, never in the party's history, has there ever been a motion that has garnered so much support," the author of the motion said.

For Speitan, the disagreement ultimately comes down to whether the party's anti-racist principles extend to rejecting an ideology that has enabled the dispossession of Palestinians.

"If there ever to be any division, then let it be clear, it's between the racists and anti-racists. There is no middle ground. You either stand with the occupier or the occupied. It is literally as simple and straightforward as that," Speitan added.