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Understandably, the Arab street has been doubtful of the American policy in the Middle East. It is understandable because the American foreign policy in the past eight years has disengaged the moderate majority of the Arab streets, that is to say the least. America’s foreign policy in the Middle East in the past eight years was highlighted by a long unjustifiable war in Iraq, frequent escalation in rhetoric with Syria and Iran, complete siding with Israel without exerting any pressure or influence to promote a peaceful solution, and the complete disregard of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process to the very last year with a futile last-minute attempt.

The new American president Obama had campaigned with a message of hope and change. He had promised to change the foreign policy tone coming out of Washington to that of promoting dialog, peace, and mutual respect. Like many around the world, Arabs were hopeful in this new president but were still doubtful that that was all campaign rhetoric that will soon be forgotten. After all, George W. Bush had also campaigned under the banner of change!

Barack Obama, however, is off to a good start. He has extended a peaceful message to the Muslim world in his inauguration speech as I blogged previously. He also called Israeli and Palestinian leaders on his first couple of days to gesture that he will not leave the peace process to the last days of his presidency as some of his predecessors have done. His pick for Middle East envoy has a proven record of brokering peace between the Irish and the British, and many are hailing him as a good and balanced pick to hopefully broker a meaningful peace for the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Most recently, in his first public TV interview after the inauguration, Obama appeared on the Arabic news channel Al-Arabiya where he seemed to reach out to the moderates in the Arab and Muslim world with a message of mutual respect and open dialog.

I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised! I too was initially doubtful that Obama would be any different when it came to the Middle East than his predecessors. But so far he has proved me wrong, he seems to be working well on it and I hope he continues. So long are the days of George Bush’s “spreading democracy through invading countries”.

I just hope that Obama’s efforts to change the tone of America in the Middle East continues, and I hope that he will make some serious effort to exercise his influence to broker a real and sustainable peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So Mr. Obama, so far you seem to be working on these foreign policy issues harder and more sincerely than your predecessors. Thank you for that. I hope you continue to do so, and I wish you the best of luck.

Note: It goes without saying of course that it will not all be solved with the external interference of the United States. We Arabs have to work on solving our own problems and building our own communities. I believe that many people agree on this, and I hope it was implied from my previous posts.

I found this to be one of the best lines of Obama’s inauguration speech. I found it very applicable to our situation in the Arab world.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

It seems that we often forget that our shortcomings are of our own doing. We all have an obligation to build our own countries and enhance our lives and the lives of all their citizens. Instead of blaming all our downfalls on others, we have to take building a bright future for ourselves into our own hands. Instead of giving up, we have to take it upon ourselves to create opportunities in our homelands were they are missing.

Other than that, i really liked the gesture shown by Obama by directly mentioning the Muslim world and how there are common interests between the Muslim world and America, and how that both can work at them in a civilized and peaceful way. Hopefully his administration will be much better than its predecessor in dealing with the Middle East and the Arab & Muslim worlds in general.

[full transcripts of Obama's inaugural speech here]

During the last crisis in Gaza, Israeli spokespeople and pro-Israeli pundits argued that the high amount of civilian death and casualties is not because of Israel’s use of excessive fire power and disregard of Palestinian civilian human life, but because the Hamas fighters were hiding between civilians. On the scene eye witness accounts, however, have often denied that Hamas fighters or rockets were located in the bombed areas.

Even if we chose to believe that Israel is only surgically targeting militants and not infrastructure, civil services facilities, or just bombing anything that moves; That still does not justify Israel’s actual actions on the ground.

For example, Israel already had complete knowledge of GPS locations of hospitals, UN schools and facilities, and even residential towers. Israel also has complete knowledge that civilians fled to these locations for shelter and treatment. So, if Israel was really trying to minimize civilian casualties in the densely populated Gaza Strip, and even if a sniper or a rocket was fired from a hospital or a school’s vicinity, is the surgically targeted response to bomb the entire area ? Does that really minimize civilian casualties ? What benefit would Israel get from bombing a hospital ??

In the following video, Kenneth Roth, an executive director at the Human Rights Watch describes how Israel used 155 millimeter caliber weapons in a densely populated civilian area. A single fire from this weapon can cause casualties within a 300 meeter radius of its impact location. So, would an army seeking to minimize civilian casualties use such a weapon in a dense urban setting ? The answer is of course not.

The following interview is only 3 minutes long and is really worth the viewing. Unfortunately, it only aired on CNN International which is rarely viewed inside America.