World Zionist Congress rejects Smotrich settlement plan

“I didn’t think we had enough votes, to be honest,” she said.

But she believes that critical support came from within the ranks of centrist international Jewish organisations such as Maccabi and Hadassah – which includes Wizo – that helped tipped the vote.

Smotrich’s plan to build 3,000 homes in the E1 zone of the West Bank would link the existing settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to Mount Scopus.

It would “make it impossible to create a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank,” according to the motion advocated by the Labour Zionist Alliance at the Congress.

While the resolution is unlikely to have influence on Israeli government policy, it shows the depth of the divide within world Jewry over the plan.

Rabbi Lea Muhlstein, chair of the Zionist Federation and former chair of Arzenu, the world Progressive Zionist movement[Missing Credit]

Muhlstein said, “I think the outcome showed that many of the concerns – opposing E1 settlements, Gaza resettlement, Jewish sovereignty over Temple Mount, as well as a call for a State Commission of Inquiry into October 7 and supporting equal access to the Kotel - are not just left-wing causes.”

“The majority of Jews from around the world embrace these positions,” she claimed.

While many of the resolutions have only symbolic importance, some have practical consequences – for example, an agreement to extend Jewish Agency support to Progressive synagogues in Israel.

The Congress also has a key role in deciding who gets to control international Zionist organisations such as the Jewish Agency and Keren Kayemet Le’Israel (the Jewish National Fund), whose combined budgets run to around £750 million.

Left and right had reached an agreement to split the leadership of the WZO and KKL between the right-wing Likud and the Israeli opposition party Yesh Atid, with representatives from the two groups taking it in terms to run them for half the allotted term.

But the deal was thrown into jeopardy after a Likud group reportedly tried to secure a top WZO post for Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli Prime Minister – a move adamantly rejected by the left.

To complicate matters, Likud itself has been split during the Congress into no fewer than three factions, making it harder to achieve consensus.