JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to reports that American intelligence intercepted e-mails from senior Israeli officials.

“In the close ties between Israel and the United States, there are things that must not be done and that are not acceptable to us,” Netanyahu said Monday at the beginning of a Likud Party faction meeting at the Knesset.

It was his first response to the news that broke Dec. 20, based on documents that were leaked to several newspapers last week by former U.S. National Security Agency staffer Edward Snowden.

Netanyahu announced at the meeting that he had ordered an investigation into the issue.

Netanyahu told the party meeting that he had met with Esther Pollard and had updated her on his efforts to free her husband, jailed spy-for Israel, Jonathan Pollard. Pollard is in the 29th year of a life sentence in a U.S. prison for spying for Israel while working as a civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst. Netanyahu is expected to call for Pollard’s release as part of the current U.S.—brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.