A historical opinion by the European Commission’s then top lawyer, obtained by EUobserver, said the bloc was legally entitled to suspend cooperation with Israel, such as its ‘Horizon Europe’ science grants and ‘Erasmus’ student-exchange scheme, already in 2017 due to Israel’s violations of international law in the West Bank.

It was even entitled to freeze the whole EU–Israel Association Agreement, which governed their duty-free trade, the memo added. It showed the EU was fully aware of Israeli abuses, that they were getting worse, that dialogue with Israel was ineffective, and that Palestinians had no legal redress.

The seven-page document, dated 5 October 2017, was signed by Luis Romero Requena, the then director general of the commission’s legal service and marked “strictly confidential”. Romero Requena retired in the meantime, but the law has not changed, while Israeli violations have spiralled off the charts.