On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to respond to specific requests she made a week earlier. The offers were not made public, but on Friday, Ms. Clinton called them “useful and productive” and agreed with a BBC interviewer that her “escalated tone” had paid off; George J. Mitchell, the American envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whose trip here to further peace talks was delayed until the phone call, announced he would be arriving on Sunday. Mr. Netanyahu will be in Washington this week and is expected to meet with top officials, possibly including President Obama, another sign of reconciliation.
The Americans believe that the kind of rude surprise that occurred when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was visiting here earlier this month — an Israeli announcement of 1,600 units of Jewish housing in a part of Jerusalem conquered by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians — is not likely to be repeated in the coming months. That was one of Ms. Clinton’s central demands of Mr. Netanyahu: no more acts that disturb the atmosphere as indirect talks with the Palestinians get under way.
The 1,600 units in East Jerusalem constituted the latest of several steps that the Americans considered problematic. The Palestinians felt exposed and the Americans were furious.
The Israelis, by contrast, say that while Mr. Netanyahu offered confidence-building measures for Palestinians in the West Bank, he made no concessions on Jerusalem. There are dozens of projects in the pipeline in Jerusalem, they said, and he has no intention of slowing down or interfering with them.
Whether he will quietly do so anyway, allowing each side the chance to go on claiming it won, remains to be seen.
Several days ago the prime minister’s office sent out a letter to the Ministries of Interior and Housing and the construction and planning committees for Jerusalem requesting a detailed list of all plans of more than 20 units in the city’s post-1967 neighborhoods. The letter also asked for all details on Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood where the 1,600 units are to be built. The information was to be provided before Sunday night, when Mr. Netanyahu leaves for Washington.
The implication was clear: Mr. Netanyahu does not want to be surprised again by a construction announcement.
But will he act to stop the projects as they come up? He did just that two weeks ago when the mayor of Jerusalem was about to announce the redesign of a Palestinian neighborhood against the wishes of the residents. After Obama officials called him, Mr. Netanyahu called the mayor and got him to delay.
“I don’t think anything official will be announced, but I can imagine that there will be little building for Jews in Arab neighborhoods,” said a former official who remains a consultant to the Israeli government and would speak only on condition of anonymity to guard his official relationship. “And on Ramat Shlomo I imagine the prime minister gave assurances that nothing would be built for some years.”
Another government adviser, however, said neither of the promises had been made, nor would they be.
“If we are talking about any freeze in Jerusalem, the seven top ministers of the government did not agree,” he said. “I don’t see any concessions possible in Jerusalem. It is politically impossible.”
A senior official agreed. Speaking on the condition that he not be named, he said that Israel considered itself sovereign in Jerusalem and that even though the world disagreed, Israel would do nothing to foster, even tacitly, the de facto division of the city.
The discord with Washington has left the Israeli public divided and perplexed. In a poll published Friday in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, 46 percent of 500 respondents said construction should be stopped in East Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the Palestinians, while 51 percent said it should not. Asked who was responsible for the latest dispute with Washington, 35 percent blamed Israel and 37 percent blamed the United States (the rest did not respond).
Asked whether Mr. Netanyahu led his ministers or they led him — he has a large coalition mostly of the right — 41 percent said he led, 47 percent said he was being led. Yet when asked to name the person they would most like to lead the government, Mr. Netanyahu still came out ahead of all others, with 41 percent selecting him. Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, got 33 percent. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
“The public is confused, and the prime minister is confused by what has happened,” Yaron Dekel, a morning radio host and former Washington correspondent of Israel Radio, said in a telephone interview. “Both were taken totally by surprise by the Americans’ reaction, since building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem had never before produced such a response.
“I think this was an excuse for the Americans to teach him a lesson,” he continued. “Now they have made their point, and they are acting like lawyers trying to find the substance in things he supposedly offered. But on this point, he is not going to change.”
Meir Sheetrit, a member of Kadima, said the tension between Washington and Jerusalem was not really about building in Jerusalem but about Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to move peace talks forward in the past year. Mr. Sheetrit was a minister under Mr. Netanyahu when he was prime minister in the late 1990s and then a minister under Mr. Netanyahu’s successors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
“When we in Kadima were in power, we built lots of Jewish housing in Jerusalem, but everyone understood we were negotiating seriously for peace,” he said by telephone. “Since everyone sees this government going nowhere, every small action gives the perception that it is creating obstacles for peace.”
Mr. Netanyahu and his top aides disagree, saying that they have been pushing hard for negotiations with the Palestinians for a year and that there was no reason for the Americans to begin a public campaign against their Jerusalem building practices, which differ in no way from those of all previous Israeli governments.
They say that the disagreement over Jerusalem will simply have to remain while larger issues, like renewing peace talks and cooperating on stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, take precedence.
“The difference in policy on Jerusalem is unchanged,” one aide said. “Still, there is definitely a desire on both sides to pull back from the brink of confrontation.”

He also urged Israel and the Palestinians to return to negotiations with the aim of establishing an independent, viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.
But underlining the still volatile climate, hours after Mr. Ban’s visit, a Palestinian youth was killed by Israeli Army fire during a confrontation in a village near Nablus, in the northern West Bank. Another villager was critically wounded, according to Palestinian medical officials.
Palestinians said the clashes broke out after Palestinian villagers confronted Jewish settlers who approached the village, Iraq Burin, from a nearby settlement, Bracha. The Israeli military said its soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse what it called “a violent and illegal riot” in which dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks at the Israeli forces.
A Palestinian medic insisted that the youth, Muhammad Qadus, 16, was killed by live fire. The Israeli military said that no live fire was used, and that soldiers said two Palestinians were hit with rubber bullets.
Sporadic clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in East Jerusalem and the West Bank have increased in recent weeks, with Palestinians calling for more protests against Israeli actions.
In his news conference in Ramallah, Mr. Ban called on Israel to act responsibly, and said that any settlement activity in the occupied territories was “illegal” and “must be stopped.”
His visit to the region comes on the heels of a bitter diplomatic row between Israel and the United States over new plans for Jewish housing construction in East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel after its capture from Jordan in 1967 and which Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state.
Israel declared a partial, 10-month freeze in settlement building last November, but it allowed for the completion of thousands of residential units already under construction and it excluded East Jerusalem.
Mr. Ban’s visit also followed a meeting of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — in Moscow on Friday. A statement released by the quartet called for the emergence of a Palestinian state, through negotiations, within 24 months.
The quartet also called for a freeze of all settlement activity and affirmed that Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem was not recognized internationally. It called on the Palestinians to fight violent extremism and end incitement.
In the West Bank on Saturday, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, took Mr. Ban to a vantage point on the outskirts of Ramallah where he could see Israel’s security barrier and beyond it a large Israeli settlement, Givat Zeev, and a military prison erected on West Bank land.
Mr. Ban expressed support for Mr. Fayyad’s plan of building the institutions of Palestinian statehood within two years, and said that his presence sent a “clear message” of international support for a Palestinian state, according to Wafa.
Mr. Ban was scheduled to meet later with President Shimon Peres of Israel.
Late Friday night, the Israeli air force struck a disused airport in southern Gaza, wounding 13 Palestinians, in further retaliation for rocket strikes by Gaza militants against southern Israel.