Donald Trump will soon unveil what he has long billed as his “ultimate deal” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and point man on the Middle East. Mr Kushner said he was “almost done” in an interview 10 days ago, insisting, despite almost universal scepticism in the region that “there is a good deal to be done here”.

The precise content of this putative accord has been kept secret. Yet the Trump administration has taken measures that can only be seen as early instalments on a settlement configured overwhelmingly for Israel’s benefit.

As soon as he was inaugurated, President Trump casually set aside the international consensus on a two-state solution to the conflict: a Palestinian state alongside Israel, on nearly all the land in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem that Israel occupied in 1967, with limited land swaps to allow Israel to keep some of the Jewish settlements close to the pre-1967 lines.