"Sometimes, you have to say no clearly, even to America," Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said.

The differences resurfaced on Tuesday when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice failed to agree on the next step in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Ms. Rice, directed to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in the less than two years left of the Bush administration, demanded that Israel launch negotiations with the Palestinian Authority for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The negotiations would also address the Palestinian demand for the resettlement of millions of Arab refugees and their descendants in Israel.

Ms. Rice's plan, officials said, called for an international peace conference that would include such Arab countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. At the proposed conference, Israeli and Arab leaders would meet in high-profile sessions meant to influence Israeli public opinion of the benefits of fulfilling Arab terms of peace, particularly those of the Saudi plan issued in 2002.

"We checked the proposal and it turns out that the Saudis have no intention of meeting us or agreeing to any public contact," an official said.

Quietly, Israeli officials report strains in a relationship with the United States heavily influenced by Saudi oil as well as the need for Arab cooperation to stabilize Iraq. They said the Bush administration has repeatedly pressured Israel to accept initiatives in an effort to garner Arab support for U.S. policy. The U.S. pressure has included a delay in the delivery of weapons requested by Israel in wake of the 2006 war with Hizbullah.

"Some in Washington wonder why Israel does not institute a voluntary evacuation-compensation program in the West Bank settlements," Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent of the influential Haaretz daily wrote on Wednesday. "They see Olmert as too weak to evacuate settlements, but he can start moving in that direction."

Still, the U.S. treatment of Israel was said to have become more dismissive under Ms. Rice, regarded as being responsible for U.S. policy toward Israel and the PA. They said that unlike the patient approach of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Ms. Rice's behavior has been testy, demanding immediate Israeli responses to far-reaching U.S. proposals.

"Condi's attitude has always been 'Don't keep me waiting,'" the official said. "She might be personally sympathetic to Israel, but when she comes here, she wants instant progress. There is very little empathy to our problems."

Officials cited Ms. Rice's latest visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They said the secretary essentially demanded that Israel abandon the U.S.-promoted roadmap, which stipulated interim commitments before final status negotiations. The measures included an end to Palestinian attacks on Israel and the suspension of Jewish construction in the West Bank.

"What they [Americans] are proposing is negotiations without peace," Steinitz said.

Ms. Rice's attitude reflects a U.S. expectation that Israel follow Washington's dictates regardless of previous commitments, officials said. Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter recalled U.S. criticism of Israel's policy to kill Palestinians deemed insurgency commanders in an attempt to prevent suicide and other operations against the Jewish state. The Israeli policy was abandoned in late 2006.

"They told me, 'Avi, you have to stop the targeted killings,'" Dichter recalled in a March 12 briefing to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "I said, 'We learned this from you in Afghanistan.'"

At that point, a senior unidentified U.S. official told Dichter, then director of the Israel Security Agency, that Washington was not bound by any restraints. In contrast, the official said, Israel, which receives about $2.4 billion in annual military aid, must ask permission from the United States to do just about anything.

"A superpower can do anything it wants," Dichter quoted the U.S. official as saying. "A state can do a little more than allowed to by a superpower."

A key Israeli-U.S. disagreement, officials said, concerns PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert, who less than a year ago pledged to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, has argued that Abbas lacks the authority and will to honor his pledges, particularly to stop Palestinian missile strikes from the Gaza Strip and release Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

On Wednesday, Palestinian gunners from the Gaza Strip fired six missiles into Israel. Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which claims loyalty to Abbas, announced responsibility for the strikes.

"We can't ignore the fact that the chairman of the Palestinian Authority blatantly violated a series of commitments to Israel," Olmert said.

Ms. Rice and other administration officials do not dispute this, officials said. But the Americans were said to insist that Abbas represented an elected Palestinian leader willing to work with the United States and could not be abandoned.

Another argument between Israel and the United States concerns the Western effort to arm Palestinian troops loyal to Abbas. Israeli military commanders have deemed counterproductive the Fatah armament and training program to overcome the Hamas movement.

"There are more Fatah armed people in the Gaza Strip than Hamas," Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, head of the military's Southern Command, said. "That does not mean they [Fatah] will fight."

"It is not up to Americans or Israelis to decide what will be the result of the [Fatah-Hamas] struggle," Galant said. "If they decide to take over, they will take over. You cannot create this artificially on the Fatah side."

Still, Ms. Rice could not leave Israel on the eve of the Arab League summit in Riyad without an achievement. So after, hours of negotiations, Olmert, expected to resign over the next few months amid criticism of his conduct during the Israeli war against Hizbullah in mid-2006, agreed to the U.S. secretary's demand to meet Abbas every two weeks.

"They achieved something, which is the very regularized meetings between the two of them, in which they will not just talk about their day-to-day issues, but also about a political horizon," Ms. Rice said on Tuesday.