Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office has described US Secretary of State John Kerry's focus on Israeli settlements in his speech as obsessive, calling his comments "biased."

Kerry on Wednesday outlined his vision for Middle East peace in Washington DC.

He said that “the Israeli Prime Minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements,” he said. “The result is that policies of this government — which the prime minister himself just described as ‘more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history’ — are leading in the opposite direction, towards one state.”

Kerry warned Netanyahu that the Israeli government was undermining any hope of a two-state solution to its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians, and said that the American vote in the United Nations last week was driven by an effort to save Israel from “the most extreme elements” in its own government.

“The status quo is leading toward one state, or perpetual occupation,” he said. He argued that Israel, with a growing Arab population, could not survive as both a Jewish state and a democratic state unless it embraced the two-state approach that a succession of American presidents have advocated.

‘’The speech came at a moment of tension between the United States and Israel, on a scale rarely seen since President Harry S. Truman recognized the fragile Israeli state in May 1948,’’ noted The New York Times.

In a direct response to Netanyahu’s coments that “friends don’t take friends to the Security Council,” a reference to the Obama administration’s decision to abstain from a resolution condemning the building of new settlements, Kerry said the United States acted out of a deeper understanding of the alliance.

Shortly after the speech, Netanyahu's Office described Kerry's focus on Israeli settlements as obsessive, calling his comments "biased."

"For more than an hour, Kerry obsessed over the issue of settlements and hardly touched on the root of the conflict - Palestinian resistance to a Jewish state within any borders," the premier said.

"The formula proposed by Secretary Kerry is impossible and does not correspond with reality. For 25 years Israel tried similar formulae but instead of peace we got islands of terror. At the end of the day a resolution won't be reached through speeches or unilateral moves at the UN. The Jewish People won't give up its land for a terror state,’’ said Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely.

Coalition partner and leader of the pro-settlement faction in the Knesset, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the Bayit Yehudi party, also remarked on Kerry's speech, saying that Israel should not support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

"If it was up to me, we would not allow the establishment of another terror state in the heart of the country," Bennett said, rejecting Kerry's call to preserve a two-state solution.

Opposition leader in Israel's parliament, Zionist Union MK Issac Herzog, was much more conciliatory towards the secretary, calling Kerry a "great friend" who has shown "true concern" about Israel's future.

"John Kerry has always been a great friend of Israel and will always be. His speech expresses true concerns about Israels well-being & future," Herzog wrote in a tweet.