The two-week-old dispute between Israel and the United States over housing construction in East Jerusalem has exposed the limits of American power to pressure Israeli leaders to make decisions they consider politically untenable. But the blowup also shows that the relationship between the two allies is changing, in ways that are unsettling for Israel's supporters.

President Obama and his aides have cast the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not just the relationship with Israel, as a core U.S. national security interest. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the military's Central Command, put it starkly in recent testimony on Capitol Hill: "The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel." His comments raised eyebrows in official Washington -- and overseas -- because they suggested that U.S. military officials were embracing the idea that failure to resolve the conflict had begun to imperil American lives.

Read the entire Washington Post article here.