Or it might have been intended as a signal that Israel would continue to build as Israel saw fit, no matter what Washington said.

Either way, it is “unhelpful,” as Condoleezza Rice said as secretary of state in 2005 about other unilateral steps taken by Israel in East Jerusalem. That was her polite, and not very effective, way of telling Israel to hold off.

The Obama administration’s call for a freeze on new settlement construction has been unambiguous. The United States “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on May 27. She could have added “not in East Jerusalem,” which was the point of a message about the Shepherd Hotel project delivered this month to the new Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Israel’s reaction was just as clear: An undivided Jerusalem is and will always be the capital of Israel. “Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a July 19 cabinet meeting. No one, he added, has the right to tell Jews where they can live in their own capital city.

Mr. Obama, as a candidate, promised to support Jerusalem’s status as the undivided capital of Israel. What the boundaries of the city will end up being depends on negotiations.

The Israeli government has tried to change the issue: Dan Meridor, an Israeli government minister, accused the Obama administration of breaking with an agreement made in 2004 with President George W. Bush.

But the Israelis themselves have “not fully” lived up to that agreement, in the words of Elliot Abrams, a National Security Council adviser in the second Bush administration. One of the four brokered points called for a halt to government subsidies for settlers. Those have in fact continued.