I have read repeatedly that Israeli feeling is not in tandem with US actions. Indeed does Israel really need an ideologically based confrontation spear-headed by it's supposed allies right now?

Is this really Netanyahu and the Israeli right pulling the strings or to what extent is the US right (and a fully complicit Obama administration) escalating the situation all by itself? Or is it Folie a deux?

Israel now vigorously upgrading its illegal settlements program: the very issue which stalled peace talks in the first place. Considering combined factors of the Arab Spring, a growing international consensus and the US's increasingly weakened position as a leading world democracy, one wonders if Israel & the US are committed to a form of mutual suicide.