TEL AVIV — The Biden administration was shocked and frustrated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s flip-flopping over the  US-French cease-fire proposal to stop fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, with his vowing upon arriving in New York that the fighting will continue.

On Wednesday, Axios reported that Netanyahu had given his explicit approval to an Israeli team to pursue discussions on the proposal. That was before he boarded a flight to New York to attend the annual UN General Assembly meeting. Al-Monitor confirmed Axios' reporting through a source in the negotiating team and that Netanyahu gave a greenlight to the US on the proposal ahead of landing in New York. After landing on Thursday, Netanyahu vowed that Israel would keep fighting the Iran-backed Lebanese militia. Diplomatic sources confirmed that his backtracking took the Americans by surprise. 

That Washington would be surprised seems odd given the considerable experience of successive US administrations in dealing with Netanyahu and his ways over the past 15 years. 

"He will always be influenced by the last one who frightened him, by the freshest and most significant threat to his political survival," an Israeli who worked with Netanyahu for many years told Al-Monitor, speaking on condition of anonymity.