U.S.-Israel ties will remain strained for the next two years following yesterday’s election results:

White House officials hold out little hope that, in the remaining 20 months of President Barack Obama’s term, the U.S. and Israeli leaders will be able to narrow their differences over a nuclear agreement with Iran or make progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, based on early assessments Wednesday. Beyond the personal discord between Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu, the two differ starkly on Iran and Middle East peace policy.

It’s not just that the two leaders “differ starkly” on these issues. The preferred policies of the two governments are in opposition to one another on both. The U.S. is currently trying to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully with the help of some of its actual allies, and seems to be close to reaching an agreement. Netanyahu and his allies want to sabotage the only realistic deal that can do this. Officially, the U.S. supports the creation of a Palestinian state, and Netanyahu has just dropped any pretense that he will ever cooperate on this.

I don’t expect the administration to make Netanyahu pay any great “price” over the next two years, since they have repeatedly failed to do this over the last six years, but that is what a patron ought to do with a consistently irksome client. Since Netanyahu has reportedly “written off” the administration, it would only be appropriate that this is now what the administration does with him. Under Netanyahu, Israel hasn’t just been a mostly troublesome client, but has gone out of its way to become a vocal antagonist to major U.S. policy goals in the region. That’s not the behavior of an ally, but then Israel isn’t and has never been an ally of the United States. If Netanyahu’s victory can make that more obvious to Americans, its effects won’t be entirely bad.