Trouble in Gaza

There has been an explosion in the Gaza Strip. I have to say that the BBC report doesn't appear to make much sense. The Palestinian Authority claims that Hamas are responsible for an attack on a Hamas parade? Er, right. I think they might want to clarify that the P.A. are claiming that the explosion was an accident.

Aljazeera has a more useful account of the situation. In fact, Aljazeera appears to have provided a rather balanced account of the event and the various claims surrounding it. That can't be right surely? Aren't they supposed to be a bunch of terrorist apologists? Or, whisper it, is that just another myth created by people who'd like to control what we think?

Having read the Aljazeera account, as well as one or two others, I'm not sure what to make of this explosion. In the current fragile climate I'm not sure that the Israeli government are going to be quite as willing as usual to own up to air attacks. At the same time, it's quite possible that this was caused by the careless handling of explosives by Hamas. If either the Israeli government or Hamas tries to block a decent investigation into the incident then we'll probably have our answer. That's if anyone even attempts to conduct a decent investigation of course.

I must add one other thing. I don't think it's particulary wise for the Israeli's to be conducting arrest raids in the West Bank at the moment. To my mind, raids like these are unnecessarily provocative. It seems that any positive benefits gained by these raids are always going to be outweighed by the negative consequences.

Of course, that wouldn't hold if you actually wanted to increase tension and instability in the West Bank. If that's what you were after, raids like these would be just the job.

Update
A new BBC report makes it clear that the P.A. believes that the explosion was caused by "mishandling of explosives".

It also appears that the Israeli army have confirmed that they have launched air strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip. They still insist that they did not carry out an attack on the Hamas parade. Not really sure whether I'm convinced on that one way or the other.