Different policy approaches and strategic issues divide Obama and Netanyahu

The traditionally close relations between Israel and the US have turned sour under Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu over the Middle East peace process. Israeli experts are divided whether Europe can help out. That the leadership combination wasn't exactly a match made in heaven for the special relationship between Israel and the US was evident right from the start. On the one hand, there is an Israeli prime minister, generally considered a foreign policy hawk, whose leanings would place him squarely in the conservative wing of the US Republican Party. And on the other hand, there is a reformist president who won the election by promising a new approach to foreign policy that included talking to Iran and other pariah states.