After simmering tensions gave way to open hostility between the two leaders this year, the White House is working to publicly mend fences with Mr. Netanyahu and demonstrate its support for Israel, including by sending Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to speak at an Israeli Independence Day celebration in Washington on Thursday.

Yet as Mr. Obama’s response last week suggested, substantive policy differences, exacerbated by longstanding distrust, remain between the American president and the Israeli prime minister, making a full-blown public reconciliation unlikely for now.

Instead, the White House is engaged in an aggressive effort to assuage the concerns of American Jewish groups and pro-Israel members of Congress over the nuclear agreement with Iran, and to limit the potential political fallout for Democrats of what has become a bitter rift in the American and Israeli relationship.