Washington: In a striking public rebuke, the Obama administration warned Israel on Wednesday that plans for a controversial new housing project in occupied east Jerusalem would distance Israel from “even its closest allies” and raise questions about its commitment to seeking peace with Palestinians.

The harsh criticism came just hours after President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the White House. Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said the president privately raised his concerns with Netanyahu though the two leaders made no mention of the matter in their public comments to reporters.

“This development will only draw condemnation from the international community,” Earnest said. “It also would call into question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”

Netanyahu pushed back against the criticism, according to reporters travelling with him on Wednesday, saying that people should have all of the information before making such statements. He also said that while Obama did raise the issue of colonies in their meeting, the discussion did not focus on specific cases.

An Israeli official confirmed the accuracy of Netanyahu’s comments to his travelling press corps. The official would discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity.

The new 2,500 unit project that stoked US anger is contentious because it would complete a band of Jewish areas that separate occupied Jerusalem from nearby Bethlehem. The US has repeatedly criticised Israeli construction in occupied east Jerusalem, casting it as damaging to efforts to secure an elusive peace accord with the Palestinians.

‘Provocative move’

The White House also condemned what it called the recent occupation of residential buildings in Silwan, an Arab neighbourhood in occupied east Jerusalem where several hundred hard-line Israeli colonists have moved in recent years. Earnest called the move “provocative” and said it would “escalate tensions at a moment when those tensions have already been high.”

Appearing before reporters earlier, Obama and Netanyahu betrayed little of the US displeasure projected by the White House spokesman, as well as officials at the State Department. While the two leaders have long had a tense relationship, each took a polite and cordial tone in their brief public remarks.

Still, areas of discord were evident, most notably Obama’s frustration with Palestinian civilian deaths during Israel’s assault on Gaza this summer war and Israel’s wariness of US-led nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Sitting alongside Netanyahu, Obama said leaders must “find ways to change the status quo so that both Israel citizens are safe in their own homes, and schoolchildren in their schools, from the possibility of rocket fire but also that we don’t have the tragedy of Palestinian children being killed as well.”

More than 2,100 Palestinians — the vast majority of them civilians, were killed in Gaza, according to the United Nations.

Officials said much of Obama and Netanyahu’s private discussions centred on Iran. The US and its negotiating partners — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have until November 24 to reach a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme, and all sides say significant gaps remain.

The West suspects that Iran is secretly trying to build a nuclear weapon alongside its civilian atomic programme, something that Israel sees as an existential threat. Netanyahu reiterated his scepticism that the diplomatic process will allow Tehran to keep aspects of its programme intact.

Still on the agenda but with less urgency was the status of stalled efforts to forge peace between Israel and Palestinians. The peace process broke down earlier this year and there has been little sign that either side is eager to resume talks.

Instead, the Palestinians plan to ask the UN Security Council to set a deadline of November 2016 for an Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem.

The draft resolution, obtained on Wednesday by The Associated Press, would affirm the Security Council’s determination to contribute to attaining a peaceful solution that ends the Israeli occupation “without delay” and fulfils the vision of two states, “an independent, sovereign, democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine” living side by side with Israel in peace and security in borders based on those before the 1967 Mideast War.

US officials have long told their Palestinian counterparts that a negotiated solution with Israel was the only way to resolve the conflict.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has begun calling for bringing an alliance of moderate Arab states into the peace process.