Washington, March 2  Nearly half of American voters think that US House Speaker John Boehner should not have invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address US Congress without having consulted the White House, according to a new poll released Sunday.

A total of 48 percent of those surveyed believed Boehner’s decision to invite Netanyahu without first notifying President Barack Obama was not appropriate, while 30 percent said Republicans should have done so, and another 22 percent said they didn’t know enough to answer, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The results came amid rising tensions between the Israeli leader and President Obama. The White House said Obama would not meet with Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, D.C., citing that the visit comes in too close proximity to Israeli elections, Xinhua reported.

Netanyahu, who views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat to the state of Israel, is expected to reiterate his objections to the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme during his planned speech to US Congress Tuesday. He flew to the US Sunday.

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor, last week called Netanyahu’s scheduled speech “destructive” to the relationship between the US and Israel. US Secretary of State John Kerry also slammed Netanyahu for his opposition to the ongoing Iran talks.

The poll surveyed 800 registered voters from February 25 to 28, with a margin error of 3.5 percentage points.

  Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, John Boehner, John Kerry, Susan Rice, US Congress