During a visit here last week aimed at regaining momentum in the stalled talks, Mr. Kerry had criticized Israel’s continued construction in the settlements.

“If you say you’re working for peace and you want peace and a Palestine that is a whole Palestine that belongs to the people who live there, how can you say, ‘We’re planning to build in the place that will eventually be Palestine’? ” Mr. Kerry said in a joint television interview with Israeli and Palestinian journalists. “It sends a message that somehow, perhaps, you’re not really serious. If you announce planning, I believe it is disruptive to the process.”

Relations between the United States and Israel have only deteriorated since, with Mr. Netanyahu relentlessly criticizing the interim deal Mr. Kerry had been trying to broker in which Iran would freeze much of its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of some economic sanctions. “There is no need to rush into a bad deal,” the prime minister reiterated on Tuesday.

Mr. Netanyahu’s halting of the construction planning process in E1 — a vast, hilly expanse between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim — was a sign that he was trying to cool the temperatures. Palestinians contend that construction in E1, short for East 1, would disrupt the contiguity of their future state. A year ago, Israel prompted an international uproar by declaring its intention to build there a day after the United Nations voted to upgrade the Palestinians’ status to an observer state.

Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, which opposes Jewish settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories, said E1 was “very sensitive for Americans, but all the other places are not less controversial.”

Ariel Rosenberg, a spokesman for the Housing Ministry, said earlier in the day, before Mr. Netanyahu’s admonition to reconsider the construction plans, that Israel would build “all over the country.”

Separately, Avigdor Lieberman, reinstated as Israel’s foreign minister after an acquittal on fraud charges, expressed concern on Tuesday about the disconnect between Israel and the United States. His comments seemed like a rebuke to Mr. Netanyahu, and surprising given his history of speaking bluntly and his own hawkish views on both Iran and the Palestinian issue.

“We need to understand that relations with the U.S. are foundations set in stone — without them we can’t maneuver in the contemporary world,” Mr. Lieberman told the diplomatic corps at the Foreign Ministry headquarters, according to an Israeli news site. “All these differences of opinion, which are natural and have always existed, should simply not be aired as publicly as they were.”