Leading article: Heightened tensions in a dangerous arena

Thanks to yesterday's admission on Israeli television by the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, we now know there was indeed a strike by Israeli jets on a target in northern Syria earlier this month. But as to what that target was, we remain none the wiser.

There are several theories in circulation. One is that a shipment of arms bound for Hizbollah in southern Lebanon was hit. US sources have hinted that a secret joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear research project was the target. Another theory doing the rounds is that this was a strike on a Syrian chemical weapon installation. This would seem to be supported by reports of a military accident in the same area earlier this year in which a number of Syrians and Iranians were killed. And the recent, carefully-worded statement of the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, that the goal of US policy is to stop "the world's most dangerous people from having the world's most dangerous weapons" certainly hints that weapons of mass destruction are involved somewhere.

The Syrian government has complained to the United Nations over the strike. But Damascus has been considerably less forceful in pushing this issue than they might have been. Unusually, no images have been released of the spot where the missiles hit. The silence of Israel on this matter is just as unusual. Israeli officials have not been bashful in the past when they have taken military action abroad.

This has inspired some to identify a bigger issue behind all this. It has been suggested that this was a dry run for an attack on Iran; an attempt to trigger air defence radars and gather electronic intelligence. The fact that a spent fuel tank from a jet fighter was found just across the Syrian border in Turkey indicates that Turkish air space was used in this attack. The same route might well be used in a future strike on Iran.

Of course this is all conjecture. The raid may have simply been intended as a message to Iran and Syria that Israel has the capability to hit them. Or it might have been an attempt to bolster the damaged military reputation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But what little we do know is not encouraging. The Israeli government is making little attempt to deny that it violated a neighbouring country's air space. And Syria is a country that Israel ought to be talking to for the sake of peace and stability in the region. This mysterious operation has already heightened tensions.

Once more, political leaders in the region seem set on the path of force rather than negotiation. And that is something that bodes ill, not just for the inhabitants of the Middle East, but for the wider world.