The ties that bind America to Israel are beginning to fray and break

The Guardian UK
The US finally seems to be losing patience now that Netanyahu's behaviour is endangering its troops
"It was always striking to watch the smugness with which Israeli politicians sold Americans the idea that the only issue in considering the conflict with the Palestinians was what Ariel Sharon called, with deeply rolling Rs, the "tehrroar"?. The ever-expanding Jewish settlements, the annexing of land, expulsion of Palestinians, the killings of Arab children, the crimes of occupation, were discarded as an irrelevance. No one in George Bush's White House cared to challenge Sharon on that.
In Israel, ordinary people almost seemed programmed to repeat the wearying mantra that all the Jewish state ever wanted was peace but that all it ever got in return was blood and killing. That was a comfortable position for Israelis who, all too understandably at the height of the suicide bombings, found it difficult to reflect on why Palestinians might be blowing themselves up. But the myth of the relentless search for peace was important to the efforts of Sharon and Netanyahu to ensure that Americans did not call them on policies that deliberately or not – mostly deliberately – sabotaged its ever-diminishing prospects. Nowhere was this more clear than over the ever growing settlements.