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There will have been some serious head-scratching going on in the Foreign Office this week, as its Arabist mandarins plotted Britain's reaction to Israels ongoing West Bank settlement expansion.
The Foreign Office could not even keep up with the Israeli announcements.
As Avigdor Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu revealed one substantial expansion on Tuesday afternoon, Tobias Ellwood, Britain’s Middle East minister, was only just putting out a response to Sunday’s declaration that there would be 566 new homes in East Jerusalem.
It then took more than 24 hours for any official thoughts on the larger building plans to emerge from Whitehall.
Mr Ellwood’s Tuesday statement was only two lines long, and noteworthy in that the latter sentence reiterated Britain’s desire to see “an Israel that is safe from terrorism” as well as a viable Palestinian state.
When Jerusalem announced 500 new units in Ramat Shlomo last November there was no such reassurance on security — there had been twice as much condemnation instead.
So why this minor change of tack? For a start, the row over Britain’s role in UN Resolution 2334 on settlements last month burnt many fingers. Mr Ellwood was blamed for the fall-out — indeed he was sent on a whistle-stop trip to Tehran last week with his tail between his legs.
Hardly any surprise, then, that he was reluctant to speak too strongly following Israel’s latest action.
Similarly reluctant was Sean Spicer, the new White House press secretary, whose despite his busy schedule of creating “alternative facts” to present to the assembled media, kept shtum when asked about the settlement expansion.
As Theresa May travelled to Washington DC for her meeting with Mr Trump, one of the concerns on her mind will have been how to approach Israel and the Palestinians.
She finds herself trapped in a moral maze.
The Prime Minister wants to redress the balance post-2334 and reassure British Jews of the country’s general support for Israel. But remember, she heavily criticised settlement building last month.
Mrs May will not want to be seen as kowtowing on any topic to the new president who is so unpopular on this side of the Atlantic, while knowing full well that on the subject of Israel, probably more than any other, she has no choice.
And so by the end of the week it is the Prime Minister, and her Downing Street officials, who are left scratching their heads.
