"Boston consul general Nadav Tamir has been recalled for consultations so he can clarify how one of his memos appeared in the media," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

On Thursday, the privately-owned Channel 10 television reported that Tamir had warned the ministry that the refusal of Netanyahu's right-leaning government to heed US requests to freeze settlement activity in the occupied West Bank was harming Israel's most important diplomatic relationship.

"The way in which we are conducting the relationship with the US government is causing Israel strategic damage," he was quoted as warning in the memo.

"While the administration is trying to calm things down, it is Israel that keeps on heating up the rhetoric," he added.

The row over Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, including annexed Arab east Jerusalem, has brought the Jewish state's relations with its key ally to their lowest ebb in years.

Tamir warned that it was not just the US government that risked being alienated by Netanyahu's hardline stance but also many Jewish Americans.

Netanyahu's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is a controversial ultra-nationalist who himself lives in a West Bank settlement.

The Palestinians have refused to resume peace talks with Israel until it heeds its undertakings under the US-sponsored process to freeze all settlement activity.