Britain’s Green Party voted Saturday to adopt a resolution equating Zionism with racism, while its leader, Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, was away on the campaign trail, though he endorsed the resolution.

The resolution, which passed by 1,022 votes to 813, says that “Zionism should be treated as any other form of racism” and calls for the “establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital,” which opponents see as a call to eradicate the only Jewish state in the world.

The resolution also supports the “right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation” and the right of “oppressed colonial peoples to defend themselves against foreign oppression.”

The resolution argues that Zionism is racism because it “privileges one ethnic group on the basis of the subjugation of others,” adding, “This motion 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. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews … Zionism, as defined above, will be treated as any other form of racism, and this motion will be implemented by the anti-racism policy working group as appropriate and in accordance with its ordinary practice.”

The vote raises concerns that the Green Party has moved away from its core focus on environmental issues (hence the name “Green”) to turn its attention obsessively to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The motion was put forward by anti-Israel activist Lubna Spetain, who had previously called for “Zionists to be hunted in the same way as the Nazi oppressors were.”

The resolution “was not a theoretical debate or distraction from the genocide of Palestinians,” she said. “We Palestinians were not the persecutors of Jews, yet we have been forced to pay a price for crimes we did not commit.”

Four of the party’s five MPs opposed the motion, with some saying that they would support Jewish members who believed they were targeted as a result of the resolution, since an amendment saying that the motion should not be used to “pressure, proscribe or discipline members based on affiliation with Jewish community institutions” was voted down.

The resolution is open to legal challenge, as it might violate the Equality Act, which was successfully used to prosecute Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party over antisemitism, according to the lawyer who led the case, Adam Wagner.

“I think there is a strong risk that the motion as passed contravenes the Equality Act 2010, which applies to political parties, as it will discriminate against and harass people who hold Zionist beliefs and Jewish people more generally,” he said.