JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli newspapers demanded that heads should roll as the authorities braced for an embarrassing climbdown over allegations that Palestinian militants abused a UN ambulance to ferry weapons.
A UN team arrived in Israel to investigate the allegations, which sparked a furious war of words that culminated in demands for the dismissal of the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) on the grounds that he "hates Israel."
After nearly a week of insisting that video footage shot by an Israeli drone showed a militant rocket being loaded into the UN vehicle, Israeli officials late Tuesday acknowledged they might have been wrong and withdrew the clip from the official army website.
"The reexamination revealed there are doubts among the analysts as to what it is," senior staff officer General Israel Ziv told a news conference.
"The argument continues to this minute. Some say it's a weapon and some say it's an innocent object."
After viewing the footage for himself, UNRWA chief Peter Hansen had pronounced himself satisfied that it showed nothing more sinister than a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance.
In a furious protest letter to Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, he charged that what he described as Israel's "malicious propaganda" against his agency could only have been deliberate.
But a foreign ministry official insisted any error of interpretation had been accidental and in good faith, even if further checks should have been made.
"Even if there was a mistake, it was unintentional. Military officers and experts really believed it was a rocket," the official said on condition of anonymity.
"Further examination may have been warranted," he added.
A commentator on army radio was more forthright in his climbdown.
"We are so ashamed, we don't know where to put ourselves," he said.
A correspondent of the radio had tracked down the driver of the ambulance who confirmed he was the man in the video and said it showed him putting a stretcher back in his vehicle after a fruitless callout.
Israel's biggest-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot was scathing in its criticism of the authorities' handling of the affair.
"Who's the imbecile behind this scandal?" the paper asked in an editorial. The problem "is that it is not just one man but many in the system who made a string of mistakes."
As the UN team arrived to begin preparing its report for Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Israeli parliament's powerful foreign affairs committee announced an investigation of its own.
The committee's chairman, Yuval Steinitz, told army radio that officers would have to answer for their actions.
The Haaretz newspaper quoted Ziv as saying that the army would apologize if it had got it wrong.
But even if Israel began backtracking on its claims about the UN ambulance, officials made no secret of their continued hostility to the UNRWA chief.
"We have a lot to say about UNRWA and Mr. Hansen who deems that Hamas is not a terrorist organization," the foreign ministry official said.
He was referring to an admission by Hansen in a television interview that there might be unarmed supporters of Hamas on his staff, given the Islamic militant movement's popularity in the Gaza Strip.
In his letter to Shalom, the UNRWA chief had complained of what he described as "personally offensive and distorted accusations of bias" levelled at him by Israeli officials and demanded "an immediate public retraction and apology".
The vitriol had culminated in the allegation by Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Danny Gillerman that Hansen "hates Israel."