The Green Party is no longer aligned with the formal BDS movement but remains supportive of continued economic pressure on Israel, according to a resolution passed during a special meeting in Calgary Saturday.

Approximately 275 members voted on the “compromise” resolution that purged the party’s policies of any reference to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which pressures companies, governments and institutions with ties to Israel.

The party drew criticism from Jewish groups and sparked division within its own ranks in August when a pro-BDS resolution won the day and became party policy. Saturday’s resolution was aimed to resolve the differences among members over BDS, said Ken Melamed, party president.

“The party wanted to be careful not to align with a particular organization or movement,” said Melamed. “The essence of it, I think, is that the party feels that diplomatic approaches to achieving peace and justice in the Middle East have been ineffective and it’s time to move to economic actions.”

Around 85 per cent of those who voted during the special general meeting in Calgary were in support of the new resolution, which still has to be voted on electronically by all 20,000 Green Party members to be ratified, said Melamed. The rest of the votes were a mix of opponents and abstentions.

The new resolution calls on both Israel and the Palestinian people to accord mutually recognized statehood, for Israel to abide by the United Nations’ Resolution 194, for Israel to accord the Arab-Palestinian population of Israel equal political and civil rights, and for Israel to end the illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Golan Heights and end the country’s siege in Gaza, it says.

It asks Canada to take “strong diplomatic action,” including but not limited to a importation ban on products “produced wholly or partly within or by illegal Israeli settlements, or by Israeli businesses directly benefiting from the illegal occupation,” among other forms of sanction.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) condemned the compromise text “as rife with historical distortions and places the Green Party at odds with the Canadian consensus that BDS is discriminatory and counter-productive to peace,” said CEO Shimon Fogel in a statement.

“The Green Party has been coopted by extreme activists who – in their obsessive campaign of prejudice against Israelis – threaten the party’s own credibility and relevance in Canadian politics,” said Fogel.

On Thursday, Liberal and Progressive Conservative members of the Ontario legislature voted in support of a motion that condemns BDS. The House of Commons voted on a like-minded motion in February.