THE Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) calls on progressive movements across the world to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinian people in the current crisis. Our survival is at stake.

We call for an urgent re-affirmation of the UN resolutions, restoration of pre-1967 borders for a Palestinian state, beside the state of Israel, a sovereign state for all Palestinians with its capital in East Jerusalem and the right of return for refugees.

We do so because the people of Palestine face their most serious threat since 1967. Trump’s New Deal for Palestine is intended to end permanently any prospect of the implementation of UN resolutions and the fulfilment of the peace process begun in 1991.

Trump is acting as the agent for the most extreme and revanchist elements in the current Israeli administration under Benjamin Netanyahu and sees the expansion of Israel, both in terms of the territory and the exercise of regional power, as expanding and consolidating the US sphere of influence across the whole Middle East.

The Trump “New Deal” seeks to legitimise the Israeli occupation of the territory of the West Bank and formally incorporate it into Israel. In return it offers the bribe of financial support for Palestinian business. The Deal would therefore annihilate the Palestinian Authority and with it the limited but important gains it has achieved at the UN since 2012 in terms of a formal recognition of the Palestinian state.

At the same time the New Deal sketches out the prospect of the enlargement of the territory of the Gaza strip through the transfer of unoccupied desert lands to the south by agreement with Egypt.

The intent is clear. It is to give additional population and territory to an area currently administered by Hamas, to undermine the recent rapprochement with the PLO and to give political space and authority to those who have traditionally opposed any “Two State” settlement. By doing so it would justify the Israeli government’s current intransigent position in refusing any such settlement.

This is why we are appealing in particular to the peoples of Europe, and also the government of China, to redouble pressure for a settlement of the just claims of the Palestinian people in terms of UN resolutions.

The dangers are immediately apparent in Israel’s recent military strikes against Lebanon, its increased intervention in Syria and Netanyahu’s election pledge to annex the Jordan Valley.

In this crisis we appeal particularly to the people of Britain.

It was the British government which in 1917, in pursuit of its own war aims, issued the Balfour Declaration. This declaration gave recognition to the rights of the Jewish people to a homeland in Palestine. At the same time it also specified “that nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

In these circumstances Britain has a special responsibility to uphold the UN resolutions on Palestine.

We pay tribute to those in the British trade union and labour movement who have maintained their commitment to a “Two State” settlement. We are only too well aware of how both the US administration and the current government of Israel have used accusations of anti-semitism to silence support for the cause of Palestine and for a settlement on the basis of UN resolutions.

We call on all genuine internationalists to expose these accusations and to work for a future in the just cause of Palestine can be honoured and the two states of Israel and Palestine live in peace beside one another.

The current situation the Middle East, and across the world, is too dangerous for any other approach. We repeat: the next few months will be critical.

Sabri Ateyeh is the Palestinian ambassador to Italy.