The main crises between the United States and its Middle East ally Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967:

June 8, 1967: During the Six-Day War, Israeli warplanes hit the USS Liberty, a navy vessel in the eastern Mediterranean, killing 34 sailors. Israel says the attack was in error, an explanation that Washington accepts.

“Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.”
– Captain Richard F. Kiepfer, Medical Corps, US Navy (retired), USS Liberty Survivor

1974-75: U.S. president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger successfully pressure Israel to sign agreements on handing back the Sinai Peninsula, captured from Egypt in 1967.

1978: Another U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, expresses frustration at the refusal of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to make concessions in the months leading up to the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, which led to the historic 1979 peace treaty between the two former arch-enemies.

1985: Washington learns that a U.S. citizen, naval officer Jonathan Pollard, has been secretly passing military secrets to Israel. Pollard is jailed for life in the U.S., but becomes a hero in Israel, which grants him citizenship.

1991: U.S. president George Herbert Bush and his secretary of state James Baker bring pressure to bear on Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to take part in peace talks with the Palestinians in Madrid.

They also freeze U.S. guarantees on loans worth $10 billion to persuade Shamir to limit settlement in the occupied territories. The crisis contributes to Shamir’s defeat in elections the following year.

March 9, 2010: Even as U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden is in Israel, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives permission for the construction of 1,600 new Jewish housing units in east Jerusalem. The incident sparks a major crisis between the two long-standing allies.