Zack Polanski has said no country has a “right to exist” and that instead people do, when asked about Israel.
During an appearance on Robert Peston’s ITV show on Wednesday, the Green Party leader was asked if he believed Israel “has a right to exist.”
This came after Polanski had described Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state” over its war on Gaza during the interview with Peston.
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The journalist challenged Polanski, who his Jewish himself, over his stance, asking him: “Israel has a right to exist? Yes or no?”
In response, Polanski said: “I don’t believe any country has a right to exist. People have a right to exist.
“The Israelis have a right to exist, the Palestinians have a right to exist.”
The politician said it was Britain’s role as a “third country to make sure there is fairness, transparency and accountability about a peace process.”
He continued: “I always think these semantics about whether a country has a right to exist just ends up in gatekeeping – which is how we ended up in this mess in the first place with the Balfour Declaration.”
Peston replied to Polanski that the “implication” of his words was that “Britain doesn’t have the right to exist, which also carries quite heavy connotations.”
The Balfour Declaration mentioned by Polanski was the statement made by British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour in 1917, which promised a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people.
The document is widely seen as paving the way for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent removal of large numbers of Palestinians from their homes.