US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiled through gritted teeth to hide their mutual loathing yesterday as they uttered platitudes about Middle East peace.

President Obama said before the meeting that he did not expect peace to be achieved before he leaves office in January 2017.

He added that he would seek Mr Netanyahu’s thoughts on ways to lower tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and get the parties “back on a path towards peace.”

The Israeli prime minister claimed not to have “given up our hope for peace” and paid the traditional ritual compliment to a two-state solution.

However, the falsity of his words was illustrated by the revelation in yesterday’s Haaretz newspaper that preliminary approval has been given to plans for the construction of about 2,200 more homes in illegal West Bank settlements over the next decade.

The Jews-only homes would be built in several settlements east of Ramallah by 2030.

Neither Mr Obama nor his Israeli guest showed any desire to prolong their previous blazing row over the Iranian nuclear accord, which Mr Netanyahu tried to stop, even delivering a speech to the US Congress to demand that its implementation be blocked.

Mr Obama called his differences with Mr Netanyahu on the deal “narrow” and the latter didn’t mention it at all.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops shot and killed young Palestinian woman at a checkpoint yesterday, claiming that she had pulled a knife in an attempt to stab guards.