After more than a year of strained relations over Israel’s illegal settlement expansion, both leaders went out of their way to stress that bilateral ties are back on track. So much so that some analysts here have been derisive over the effusive statements by both leaders.

Commenting on the flurry of compliments the two leaders showered upon each other, the BBC’s Washington correspondent said: “It was time to bring the curtain down on the final scene in the day's political theater. In the age of political spin, it is always useful to counter criticism by exaggerating it.”

Commenting on Obama’s “politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement” four months ago, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote Wednesday that Obama got a tough lesson when “...The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration’s actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover.”

Tuesday’s White House meeting was, according to Milbank, “all about saving face.”

Obama, he wrote, “performed the Full Monty of pro-Israel pandering [when he said]: ‘The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable.’”

Obama came to office with an admirable hope of reviving Middle East peace efforts by appealing to the Arab world and positioning himself more of an honest broker, wrote Milbank, noting that “even before Obama’s surrender to Netanyahu, Muslims were losing faith that he would be the transformational figure who spoke to them from Cairo last year.”

Despite the fact that Obama is losing ground in polls taken throughout the Middle East, the fact is that despite the scene that was played out at the White House on Tuesday, there is plenty of evidence that the relationship between the two countries is changing, even though their political, historical and cultural DNA remains inextricably linked.

The Israeli ambassador in Washington is reported to have briefed his foreign ministry that there was a tectonic rift between the two countries.

Meir Dagan, head of Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence service, told a committee in the Israeli parliament that his country was gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a liability.

A leading strategist in Washington wrote recently: "It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel."

The reason for all this was stated plainly by the US General David Petraeus when he testified before the Armed Services Committee last March.

Petraeus, American’s top general, said that anti-American sentiment in the Middle East was exacerbated by perceptions of US favoritism toward Israel.

Petraeus is currently the head of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), commander of US Forces Afghanistan, and until recently was the commander of the United States Central Command.

This attitude is mirrored by Anthony H. Cordesman at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, who recently wrote that “Israel’s government should act on the understanding that the long-term nature of the US-Israel strategic relationship will depend on Israel clearly and actively seeking peace with the Palestinians — the kind of peace that is in Israel’s own strategic interests.”

Finally, even the New York Times took a poke at the Obama-Netanyahu meeting Tuesday, writing in its lead editorial: The two men, it said, “Satisfied their short-term political goals with an oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.

“We would like to have confidence in Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration that he is ‘committed to that peace’ with Palestinians and President Obama’s assertion that the Israeli leader is ‘willing to take risks for peace.’”

It then noted what some may have missed in the all-smiles meeting between the two leaders: “Mr. Netanyahu didn’t offer any specifics about what he will do to help move peace negotiations forward,” noted the NY Times. “Unlike Mr. Obama, the Israeli prime minister did not publicly mention a two-state solution.”

“More stalemate,” it concluded, “only feeds extremism.”