“The European Union should conduct a debate on whether or not it would be appropriate for all EU countries to recognise Palestine as a state,” Jean Asselborn (LSAP) was quoted as saying.

“In this way one could at least create a counterweight to Trump’s policy.”

Asselborn was referring to a statement made by US secretary of state Mike Pompeo a week earlier saying that the Israeli civilian settlement policy and the demolition of Palestinian houses in the West Bank did not breach international law. In the interview, Asselborn raised the fact that in 2016, a UN Security Council resolution had reaffirmed that settlement policy must cease because it violates international law. Previously the US and EU had worked together in pursuit of a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine, a situation which was already a “very unstable construct”.

“If, with the change of course by the USA, the law of the strong is now being enforced everywhere, we will find ourselves in a situation where the law no longer has any strength,” Asselborn was quoted as saying.

He further added that if the Israeli settlement policy continued unchecked, it risked creating 5 million additional refugees in the Middle East. “The Palestinians affected will then have to live somehow and somewhere in camps in the Middle East. That cannot be in Israel's interests,” he said.