Donald Trump has sparked an angry backlash after giving the post of US ambassador to Israel to his bankruptcy lawyer, who is a strong supporter of Israeli settlements and once compared liberal Jewish activists to “Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps”.

Mr Trump’s decision to give the sensitive post to David Friedman, a Right-wing attorney who has no diplomatic experience, marks a dramatic shift in long-held US policy on the Middle East.

Mr Friedman opposes the two-state solution - the idea of Israel living alongside and independent Palestine - and has talked openly about replacing it with a one-state model where Israel annexes the occupied West Bank.