US-Israel relations ‘at 35-year low’

RELATIONS between Israel and the United States have hit a 35-year low, Israel’s ambassador in Washington said, amid simmering tensions between the two allies.

“Israel’s relations with the US are facing the most severe crisis since 1975,” the Yediot Aharonot newspaper yesterday quoted ambassador Michael Oren, a prominent Middle East historian, as telling consuls in the US during a telephone briefing.

That year US calls for a partial Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, then under Israeli occupation, ignited a major crisis between the two.