Zack Polanski has refused to say that Israel has a right to exist, as he fights to keep control of the Green Party after a major by-election defeat.

The party leader was asked five times on Friday whether Jewish people should have a safe home in the Middle East in a state called Israel, after party members had earlier voted for a motion to declare that “Zionism is racism”.

Mr Polanski is now facing calls for his resignation from Jewish Green members, who say his failure to condemn the motion was “a big mistake” and undermined trust in the party among British Jews.

However, he is also under pressure from Green members who believe he should go even further in his support for Palestinians.

On Thursday, Mr Polanski failed to beat Labour in the by-election to replace Sir Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras.

He won 33 per cent of the vote but lost to Sagal Abdi-Wali, who won 45 per cent. The Conservatives and Reform UK came third and fourth, with seven and six per cent of the vote respectively.

Mr Polanski’s campaign was overshadowed by accusations of anti-Semitism against Green Party members and anger over its conference motion in Brighton on Sunday, which called for Israel to be replaced with a single Palestinian state.

Mr Polanski, who is of Jewish descent, said on Friday that he would not have voted for the motion because there were “aspects of it that I don’t think are ok”.

He declined five times to say that he believed Israel had the right to exist, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “I believe everyone deserves a safe home.”

When challenged to give a “very simple answer”, Mr Polanski said: “I don’t believe any state has the right to oppress or to commit apartheid, and certainly not genocide on another people.

“Now, it may be in the future that there is a solution in which case Israelis and Palestinians can have equal rights.”

The Green leader was asked again whether Israel had a right to exist or not, and replied: “I want to see equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, but at the moment Palestinians don’t have equal rights.”

His comments put him at odds with all other political parties and Left-wing leaders, including Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader.

During the interview, Mr Polanski said he did not believe it was “up to the British Government or, indeed, certainly not up to the Green Party of England and Wales” to decide whether there should be a two-state or one-state solution in the region.

Moderate and Jewish Greens have now called for him to quit. Vivien Lichtenstein, the head of the Jewish Greens, told Times Radio that Mr Polanski “should resign”, adding that he had made “a big mistake” by refusing to intervene in the motion before it was passed on Sunday.

“I don’t know which Jewish members of the party he’s been working with – it certainly hasn’t been with the Jewish Greens committee,” she said.

Senior Green figures believe Mr Polanski has been too weak to challenge Islamists within his party, many of whom have joined in the last 18 months.

The motion passed on Sunday by 1,022 votes to 813 among party members, and has become the Greens’ official policy under the party’s constitution.

It also implicitly called for the abolition of the state of Israel and the establishment of a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital”.

Backing a two-state solution would put Mr Polanski at odds with the official policy of the party he leads and make his position untenable.

Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on anti-Semitism, has called on Britain’s equalities watchdog to launch an investigation into the Green Party over the substance of the “Zionism is racism” motion.

Accusing Mr Polanski of “running away” from the motion, he told the Jewish Chronicle: “The Green Party is denying Jewish members and potential members their right to observe their religion as they choose and to identify as they choose. This is undeniably an issue for the EHRC to investigate and act on, and I call on them to do so immediately.

“In the United Kingdom you are able to identify as Jewish as you choose to, and anyone putting restrictions on this is acting outside of the law.”

The incident is the latest in a series of rows over anti-Semitism within the Green Party and concerns about “entryists” joining to focus its campaigning on Israel rather than environmental issues.

In the last six months, candidates have been exposed for describing Jewish people as “cockroaches” and sharing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or posting support for Palestine Action, a proscribed terror group.

Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley, two former Green Party leaders, have criticised Mr Polanski’s approach to Israel and the conference motion, but stopped short of calling for his removal.

Mr Bartley condemned the “toxicity of the Green Party brand” in recent months, arguing that allegations of anti-Semitism and the motion were “clearly having an impact”.

“At a time when people vote against what they don’t like as much as for what they believe in, it would not be surprising if people voted tactically to keep the Greens out,” he said.

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Ms Lucas, who led the party from 2016 to 2018, said on Thursday evening that she hoped Mr Polanski “would have been a very strong critic of this motion”.

“The motion was flawed from top to bottom – in my view it is dangerous, it is divisive,” she said. “I know an awful lot of people are hurting out there now, particularly in the Jewish community, and I am very sorry.”

In a piece for the New Statesman on Friday, she added: “Entryism has been a problem for many parties, but with our commitment to direct democracy and our cumbersome internal accountability mechanisms, the Greens are woefully exposed.”