Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, clashed face to face with her Israeli counterpart on Wednesday as the two countries remained at loggerheads over the expansion of settlements in occupied territory.

In what appeared one of the most tense encounters between the sides for several years, Mrs Clinton and Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, disagreed on both the US call for a complete freeze on settlement growth and Israel’s contention that the administration of George W. Bush, the former president, had signalled that some expansion was permissible.