Well, it was probably only a matter of time.

There have been any number of YouTube knock-offs to hit the market.

There is GodTube, which features a collection of Christian music videos, ominous warnings that The Rapture is coming, and baby preachers.

There is JewTube, where the most popular items include a "Happy Birthday Israel" video featuring young Jewish girls prancing about Israel and a movie trailer for "Super Bad."

And, of course, there is PornoTube, which features, no surprise here, porn.

Now, Islamic militants are getting with the program.

The newest kid on the block is AqsaTube, a new video sharing Web site run by Hamas.

As might be expected, the site features a large collection of videos showing masked Palestinian fighters training for battle, militant music videos depicting firefights in which Islamist fighters triumph, and tributes to slain Hamas leaders.

But few AqsaTube viewers seem to be tuning in to watch the militant propaganda videos.

The most popular videos don't feature Hamas militants; the most viewed videos are episodes of Bab al-Hara, a Syrian soap opera that is one of the most popular television shows in the Arab world.

What?

Are Islamic fighters spending their afternoons secretly watching soap operas? Could this explain the failure of Hamas militants to achieve their goal of destroying Israel? Might Bab al-Hara be Israel's secret weapon in defeating, or at least diverting the attention of, Hamas hard-liners?

Well, the Syrian soap opera is wildly popular across the Middle East, including the Gaza Strip, where some Imams have criticized the Faithful for tuning into the series.

But detailed Web tracking shows that the overwhelming number of people tuning into AqsaTube -- more than 40 percent -- live in Saudi Arabia. The second-largest percentage -- seven percent -- are tuning in from Iraq.

In fact, more people in Israel (2.6 percent) are watching AqsaTube than in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (1.2 percent). (Of course, the Israeli numbers would also include Arab-Israelis, but it seems clear that AqsaTube isn't getting much air time so far among Palestinian viewers in Gaza and the West Bank.)