Israel has surely lost more this week in support abroad — in the US, above all — than it has gained in asserting its right to build houses around Jerusalem.

This is an incomplete list of those who condemned the plans to build 900 new housing units in Gilo, in East Jerusalem: China; Russia; the European Union; Britain and France; Ban Ki Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations; Saudi Arabia; Iran; Syria; Egypt; Jordan. President Obama took time out during his Far East tour to express dismay; the White House issued a stinging second blast.

It takes something to unite your friends and enemies against you. Israel is taking to a reckless level the indifference it shows to foreign opinion, even that of the US.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, is wrongly assuming two things will never happen. The first is that the US will always veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel. Obama is not about to make an historic switch to abstention, but his officials say that it’s no longer taboo. Nor, for now, is the council about to recognise a unilateral declaration of statehood that some Palestinian leaders want to make. But again, not unthinkable.

Netanyahu’s officials have wheeled out arguments for Gilo, which they present as decisive, but ring hollow outside their airless cockpit. One is that the 40,000-strong town is part of Jerusalem, and will be part of Israel under any Palestinian deal.

But that ignores the disputes since its creation. Gilo sits east of the 1967 line, on land Israel captured in that war, and divides Bethlehem from east Jerusalem, still largely Arab, which Palestinians want as their future capital. Planned growth, on the western edge, is not infill. It pens in further the Arab village of Walaja, whose access to Jerusalem and the West Bank has been stifled by new Israeli houses and security.

A second claim is that there is a huge consensus for Jerusalem building, and that no leader could ignore that, nor move to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians. Indeed, Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, has backed Netanyahu on Gilo. But popularity does not confer legitimacy.

Nor has this been Israel’s constant position. Two years ago Ehud Olmert, then the Prime Minister, noted at the Annapolis summit that “the world that is friendly to Israel, when it speaks of the future, speaks of the division of Jerusalem”. Israel might have to compromise, he hinted, given growing international pressure.

Despite his pledge to refrain from new building (an ambiguous term), Israelis have built thousands of homes since then east of the 1967 line. Israel makes light at its peril of the hugely corrosive effect on diminishing support abroad.

Israel’s best, urgent call on that support stems from its justified fears of terrorism and attack. Obama rightly said that Israel needed security, and the US would uphold it. But Israel’s weakest claims are that settlements have much to do with security, and that its democracy is so vigorous that no government can curb the popular spread of housing even on internationally contested land.

Netanyahu should take note of Obama’s warning to Hamid Karzai, sworn in yesterday as Afghan President: that no one should take US support for granted, certainly not leaders who try to make him look impotent. The lesson extends beyond Kabul.

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