I knew what this meant. True, the Israeli soldiers who killed the boy may not have known whom they hit. They were apparently firing through a wall. The Israelis blamed the Palestinian authority for organising riots. The BBC then ran a tape of Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian spokesman, saying that the Israelis, not the Palestinians, had been shooting.
Truth is a hard bullet to bite.
Palestinian policemen had also opened fire on the Israelis. Ironically, the Arab press in Beirut had no hesitation in saying this. The press in Lebanon showed photographs of Palestinian policemen firing Kalashnikov rifles at Israeli troops. And so, by last night, the story had changed. Reporters watched helplessly as the boy and his father became trapped against a wall with nothing but a small concrete block for cover as bullets rained around them on a road near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip.