Mr Ya'alon was permitted to meet Chuck Hagel, his American counterpart, and Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations. The latter meeting reportedly went ahead only because the White House learnt of it too late to order it cancelled. The unprecedented treatment prompted Yair Lapid, the Israeli Finance Minister, to warn that US-Israel relations were in "crisis".

Mr Ya'alon was forced to apologise in January after calling Mr Kerry "obsessive and messianic" for pursuing a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. There was a further angry reaction in March when he claimed that American foreign policy projected "weakness" throughout the world and played down the importance of US military aid to Israel. "Given some of his comments in the recent past, it should come as no surprise that he was denied some meetings," Haaretz quoted an unnamed "senior" US official as saying.

More alarming from an Israeli perspective was the suspicion that the administration was using Mr Ya'alon's visit to express general dissatisfaction over Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, who himself has been frequently disdainful towards President Barack Obama. "Ya'alon's harsh criticism of American policy this past year was actually only a symptom of the insulting and irresponsible stance that Prime Minister Netanyahu has adopted towards the Obama administration," wrote Shimon Shiffer in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. "The White House has an open score with the Israeli Prime Minister: they are convinced that he tried to tarnish the President's public image and haven't forgotten how he stirred the pot behind the scenes on behalf of Obama's Republican adversary, Mitt Romney."

Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the US and an ally of Mr Netanyahu, is said to be "persona non grata" in the White House while the Prime Minister provoked anger this month when he described US criticism of Israeli settlement-building as "against American values".

Mr Ya'alon drew further criticism on Sunday after it emerged that he had issued an order banning Palestinians from travelling to work in Israel from the West Bank on the same buses as Jewish settlers following pressure from settlers' groups. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, condemned the decision as "pandering to the demand for racial segregation on buses".