Unreported

It appears that much of the Western media has failed to notice the publication of a report by the Israeli Government, which concludes that the deaths of several people on a beach in the Gaza Strip were not caused by Israeli fire. The report provides evidence to back up this conclusion, including some taken from shrapnel found on the beach. The report states that no Israeli ammunition of the type of which remains were found on the beach was used that day. Therefore, there are only really three possibilities; the deaths could have been caused by:

1. An unexploded bomb or land mine.
2. A misdirected rocket fired from a Palestinian position.
3. An Israeli soldier firing against orders.

I will deal with each of these in turn. It is possible that the beach was mined by the PLO in the past as a means of protecting the beach from Israeli troop landings, but the chances of a mine staying there that long, given the popularity of the stretch of beach in question, seem rather low to me.

The "Qassam" rockets regularly fired at Israeli towns by members of Palestinian terrorist groups are known to be highly unreliable and regularly misfire, but this usually results in injuries to the people firing the missile rather than innocent bystanders. In any case, the missiles are not so poorly made that they would end up in completely the wrong place - their main weakness seems to be range control.

And as for an Israeli soldier firing on a Palestinian family on purpose, who would do such a thing? There have been incidents of Israeli soldiers killing civilians on purpose but such cases are few and far between and are prosecuted vigourously by the military authorities. Again, this seems unlikely.

So, my conclusion is that the whole incident was some sort of freak accident. I'd say my 1st option above was the most likely, but I will be very interested to hear the results of investigations by the Palestinians.