It started with "assalaamu alaykum" and ended with "may God's peace be upon you." Inbetween, President Barack Obama dotted his speech to the Muslim world with Islamic terms and references meant to resonate with his audience. The real substance in the speech were his policy statements and his call for a "new beginning" in U.S. relations with Muslims, as outlined in our trunk news story. But the new tone was also important and it struck a chord with many Muslims who heard the speech, as our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon found. Not all, of course -- you can find positive and negative reactions here.

(Photo: Iraqi in Baghdad watches Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Mohammed Ameen)

Among Obama's Islamic touches were four references to the Koran (which he always called the Holy Koran), his approving mention of the scientific, mathematical and philosophical achievements of the medieval Islamic world and his citing of multi-faith life in Andalusia. These are standard elements that many Islam experts -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- mention in speeches at learned conferences, but it's not often that you hear an American president talking about them.

Two religious references particularly caught my attention because they weren't the usual conference circuit clichés. One was his comment about being in "the region where (Islam) was first revealed" -- a choice of past participle showing respect for the religion.

The other came when he said Jerusalem should be "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer." The Sura al-Isra is the Koran chapter about Mohammad's Night Journey to heaven, which tradition says started in Jerusalem on what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. It was an interesting way to cite Islamic tradition to say Jerusalem should be "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together." The interjection "peace be upon them" had both an Islamic tone and an interfaith touch.

(Photo: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip watch Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

Obama also gave the American Muslim population estimate -- 7 million -- that prompted him to tell a French interviewer earlier this week that the U.S. could be considered "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He didn't repeat that phrase in his speech, however, possibly because the figures don't back it up. Figures for Muslim populations are dodgy because many countries don't keep such data. Recent estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million, so he's taken about the highest figures around. If those figures are correct, the U.S. would still only rank only about 30th on the list of countries with the largest Muslim populations. That's way down on this Wikipedia list, with Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso. That's nowhere near the really big Muslim populations like the top three Indonesia (195 million), Pakistan (160 million) and India (140 million). Maybe that's why his speechwriters backed off the "one of the largest" claim.

The end of the speech also had an interesting twist. Obama reached for one of the quotes from the Koran that Muslims cite most frequently when they call for tolerance among peoples: "The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

(Photo: Egyptians in cafe watch Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Asmaa Waguih)

But he followed it up with quotes from the other two Abrahamic religions: "The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' The Holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God'."

What did you think of Obama's speech?

Here's a short video about the speech:

It was really only a matter of time.

Within days of the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza - which included the dropping of massive ‘bunker-buster’ bombs to destroy the vast network of tunnels that run under Gaza’s border with Egypt - the tunnels are up and running again.

The tunnelers say they are not interested in smuggling weapons - the food and fuel that Gazans so desperately need are far more profitable contraband anyway.

To see the tunnels open again - so soon after the end of 22 days of military operations - has riled Israel and led to warnings that further military force could be used against the tunnels.

The warnings are of little concern to those doing the digging and the smuggling - if Israel wants to stop the smuggling, they say, open Gaza’s borders.

Stopping the smuggling was one of the stated aims of Israel’s offensive. Although Israel has been bolstered by US and European support in its bid to cut off the smuggling of rockets - the facts on, and under, the ground suggest the aim was not achieved.

Stopping militants firing rockets at Israel was another stated aim. That has been achieved by a ceasefire - but Israeli intelligence estimates Hamas and other militant factions still have plenty of rockets in stock which could be unleashed if this ceasefire crumbles like so many before it.

Dealing Hamas a ‘crushing blow’ was another stated aim. That one is hard to gauge - Hamas, despite losing some of its top leaders in the campaign, has claimed ‘victory’ and still seems to be standing in Gaza.

‘Changing the reality in the south’ was another stated aim.  Again hard to gauge although much of the pre-war reality has not changed - Israelis are still living under the threat of a rain of rockets, Palestinians are still living in destitution behind a crippling blockade.

All of which, inevitably, has led to questions about what exactly has been achieved by the devastating offensive - apart from massive damage to Gaza’s infrastructure, a shocking casualty toll, a battering of Israel’s international reputation in some quarters and an impoverished and embattled population in Gaza which - on the face of it - is not blaming its Hamas leaders for the onslaught but is pointing the finger squarely at Israel.

Some commentators have said Israel achieved one important goal by reestablishing its ‘deterrence’ - its ability to make its enemies think twice before attacking - that was badly dented by an inconclusive outcome to the 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon.

Other commentators are questioning whether the means justify that end.

‘Ah - the usual suspects,’ an Israeli colleague told me when I pointed out this commentary from left-wing columnist Gideon Levy in Haaretz which raises questions about what was achieved.

Its worth noting that even the ‘usual suspects’ were far more circumspect in their criticism in the early stages of the war - indeed some were even supportive in line with the vast majority of Israeli public opinion and the mainstream media.

Reading the comments on Levy’s essay- or on this one by Gadi Baltiansky on the website of Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth - still gives a fair, if non-scientific, reflection on popular opinion in Israel which is still firmly behind the war.

More scientific is the poll published today by Israel Hayom/New Wave - which shows hawkish former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gaining steadily in popularity ahead of elections in just under three weeks.

Netanyahu - according to his adviser Ron Dermer - would have added another aim to the Gaza offensive: “Ultimately Hamas must be toppled because it is a threat to Israel,” he told Reuters here.

With the election fast turning in to a referendum on the war and its outcome - one last aim could still be achieved.

As my colleague Dan Williams reported here the fate of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit held by Palestinian militants in Gaza could be in play again - with Israel appearing more flexible on Hamas demands for the release of 1,400 inmates held in Israeli jails in return for the release of Shalit.

If that happens before election day the polls could still have some surprises in store.

If anything projects a sense of “what me, worry?” in the Ehud Olmert “travelgate” corruption case, it’s this photo, distributed by the Government Press Office, of the Israeli prime minister paying a visit on Thursday to Sderot, a  town hit repeatedly by Hamas rockets before and during the Gaza war he helped to orchestrate.

“The Beverly Hills Hotel and Bungalows” reads the logo on his jacket. 

In a case revolving around Olmert’s foreign travels and stays in luxury hotels before he became prime minister, Israel’s attorney-general plans to summon the veteran politician and his attorneys next month to give him a chance to explain why he should not be indicted.

The Justice Ministry suspects that Olmert, during trips abroad as mayor of Jerusalem and as a cabinet minister from 2002 to 2006, double-billed for plane tickets and used the extra money for family vacations and upgrades. In a separate case, a U.S. businessman said he handed Olmert envelopes stuffed with cash and told a court about his penchant for top-class hotels and fine cigars.

Olmert has denied any wrongdoing and no criminal charges have been filed. He resigned as prime minister in September, saying he would fight the allegations. He remains caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed after Israel’s February 10 election in which he is not running.

Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?

It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.

As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.

For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.

The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 - known as the Winograd Commission - recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.

Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above  – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.

Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.

The media strategy has been backed up by zero tolerance within the military and security establishment for anyone going “off message” - field commanders or political insiders who seemed to relish leaking tid-bits to their favoured reporters in 2006 are now keeping mum.

And while the virtual media war has raged – with pro-Palestinian websites like electronicintifada.net or Hamas’ own website http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/ ratcheting up the rhetoric alongside their Israeli foes – many in the traditional media (or dare I say MSM) complain that they have been totally defeated by Israel’s media strategy which has prevented them from entering Gaza or a ‘closed military zone’ neighbouring Gaza.

The world’s press has been herded on to a hill-top 2 kilometres from the Gaza Strip - where Israeli political and military spokespeople wander among the satellite trucks and live positions ‘briefing’ journalists with the official view of what’s going on inside Gaza.

As much as the protagonists have been duking it out in the virtual world - online media now has the clout to shape the way war stories are told and delivered.

The most surreal example of this is probably Joe the Plumber - yes, that Joe the Plumber of US election campaign fame - who has been engaged by pro-Israeli US website Pajamas Media to file reports from Israeli towns under Hamas rocket fire.

Joe’s basic premise seems to be that the media is inherently biased against Israel and journalists have no business being in the war zone anyway.

While you might not agree with his point-of-view - Joe is an example of the sort of do-it-yourself journalism with a strong voice that has been empowered by the Internet.

Read these two accounts - one from my colleague Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and this one from another Gaza journalist - and I think you’ll agree that reporting from inside a warzone is important, journalists should be there and the combatants should facilitate rather than threaten this effort.

And by the way - in case you were wondering - a GoogleBattle between Israel and Palestine gives Israel a decisive victory. IDF vs. Hamas, though, has Hamas edging it.

PHOTO CREDITS

Photgraphers take pictures of Israeli tanks. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Massive explosion in southern Gaza town of Rafah. REUTERS/Ibrahim abu-Mustafa

The slow pace of talks between Hamas and Egyptian mediators on Cairo’s proposal for a Gaza ceasefire is raising speculation in Israel over whether the Islamist group is playing for time, hoping to get a better deal once Barack Obama is sworn in as U.S. president on Tuesday.

Israel also has been in no rush to call off the offensive it began on Dec. 27 with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks on its southern towns.

It now has only less than a week left to put into motion a threatened third phase of the campaign, an all-out push into densely populated Gaza cities, while its strong ally, President George W. Bush, is still in office.

The bloodshed has opened faultlines in the map of Middle East diplomacy, with the Bush administration in its final week standing behind Israel, Europe pressing Israel to call off its attacks and Arab leaders speaking out against the Jewish state.

For Israel, too, waiting for Obama — who has promised to make Israeli-Palestinian peace an early priority for his administration — could have its advantages.

The way Obama, who last July visited the southern Israeli town of Sderot, a frequent target of Hamas rockets, deals with the Gaza war could set the tone early for his Middle East policy and provide an initial answer to the question being asked in Israel and the Arab world: To what extent, if any, will he soften Bush’s pro-Israeli stance?

In the big battle scene in the movie Braveheart, terrified whispers ran up and down the ragged ranks of sword-waving Scots that the English were ranged before them with “500 heavy horse” – armoured cavalry of devastating power in those days.

But the wild-haired hero-general William Wallace (actor-director Mel Gibson) rode his pony up and down the front ranks shouting: “We don’t have to beat them. We just have to fight them!”

That was in the 14th century. But 700 years later it seems to be the same cry  from the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian fighters allied to the Islamic fundamentalist cause led by Hamas pursue a lopsided battle against Israel, pitching erratic, homemade rockets into nearby Israeli lands, until they trigger a major offensive and start taking the heaviest casualties in 60 years of conflict, from Israel F-16s and Apache helicopters.

The warplane is today’s ‘heavy horse’, of course, but it can represent a far, far superior advantage. The Israelis fly with virtual impunity over the crowded Gaza enclave, picking out designated targets in their own good time, capable of selecting individual apartments in a block if they need to. Should it come to ground fighting, Israel has equally advanced tanks with state-of-the-art optics and sensors, plus plenty of modern armoured personnel carriers and artillery that the Islamists do not possess.

The score in Gaza, to state the facts in the crudest terms, was 300 to 1 dead in the first 48 hours.

Monday was day three of the air campaign. In 1999 NATO found itself in its first war, against Serbia over the conflict in Kosovo. The air campaign was conducted at the safety altitude of 22,000 feet because the Serbs, unlike Hamas, did indeed possess anti-aircraft missiles and cannon. A committee of 19 states, the 45-year-old alliance was a nervous newcomer to actual fighting. It gambled that air power would inflict just enough pain to persuade the Serbs to capitulate. But when that did not happen in the first five days, NATO was in a panic, and facing the unthinkable – an invasion.

Some generals had warned the allies that, if you start a war, you must be ready to go all the way and ‘put boots on the ground’. But they had preferred wishful thinking.

Israel, of course, is no newcomer to war, does not need lessons in the limits of air power, and knows that a ground offensive in Gaza cannot be ruled out. Even if Gaza’s Islamist militants number 35,000 as estimates say, there is little doubt who would be likely to come out on top. But it would probably be on top of a land of rubble, with a storm of Arab and Muslim defiance gathering above the entire region.

As the smoke rises from Gaza, anger and defiance seems to be spreading across the Arab world, fuelling protests and violence in the occupied West Bank, stoking anti-Israel sentiment in the wider Arab world, where the young, especially, despise seemingly weak, or complacent regimes unwilling or unable to do something. Islam is their “rock n roll” now, as one writer recently put it, and the militants of Islam have no moral problem with “asymmetric warfare” — the return of the suicide bomber to Israeli cities, the weapon no Apache or F-16 can stop.

If this is what the defiance of Gaza’s puny rockets begets, then Braveheart’s romantic injunction that “you just have to fight them” could prove to be correct.

(Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip December 28, 2008. Israel launched air strikes on Gaza for a second day on Sunday, piling pressure on Hamas after killing more than 270 people in one of the bloodiest days in 60 years of conflict between the Palestinians and the Jewish state. REUTERS/Baz Ratner)

(Editor's note: Doug Hamilton, one of our most experienced correspondents and lively writers, recently took up a new post in Jerusalem. Here's the back story to his latest feature "A Biblical view of peace high in the Holy Land.")

(Photo:the West Bank Jewish settlement of Psagot, 17 November 2008/Eliana Aponte)

When I began my assignment to Israel & the Palestinian Territories two months ago, I was determined to get out and about and see as much as possible for myself. I wanted to find out up close what life was like for the people who live here -- from the Palestinians lining up obediently to get through intimidating Israeli checkpoints, to the nightlife crowd a world away in chic Tel Aviv, to the Orthodox Jews in 16th century attire in their Jerusalem districts where you dare not drive on the Sabbath, to the Palestinian olive groves and to the settlers on the occupied land of the West Bank.

I bought a GPS navigator to help me get around and the first thing I discovered was that my desired West Bank and Gaza destinations were "in an unreachable area", according to the device. The occupied territories show up as dark grey background on the GPS. But its warnings can be overridden and  it will then guide you  pretty accurately to the "unreachable destinations" you seek.

As the little green arrow that designates your car moves along corridors through the dark grey background, isolated splodges of beige show up on the map. These are Israeli settlements, mostly on the hilltops. You look up from the highway and see new roads going up the slopes leading to new houses with red-tiled roofs. They are protected by steel gates and coils of razor wire and electric alarm fences, or set behind Israel's formidable security barrier of concrete and watchtowers. The further out you go from Jerusalem, the more there is a frontier feeling to these strangely suburban-looking little communities, surrounded by rocky terraced hillsides that have barely changed down the centuries.

A settler group recently organised a visit for foreign media to correct what they view as our misperceptions about their movement. The people I met on this little tour -- which provided the material for my feature -- betrayed not a flicker of self-doubt. They had a few sharp answers ready for any challenge to their fundamental premise: God gave this land to the Jews and nothing over the 3,500 years since the Old Testament -- the book they live by -- has changed or can change that fact. The settlers we met were all friendly and polite. I have also witnessed young settler activists in less genteel circumstances, calling for the killing of young Palestinians who throw rocks at police guarding security-barrier constructions and demanding the displacement of Palestinian villagers in the way of their project to make the occupation of what they call Judea and Samaria a permanent fact.