Palestinians claim Israel shot own rocket at Ashkelon

Firas Press has a bizarre article claiming that Israel must have shot the rocket at Ashkelon in order to gain sympathy while George Bush is visiting:

Informed sources in the Palestinian resistance said that the resistance had not fired a Palestinian rocket at the shopping center in Ashkelon. The source who refused to reveal his name said that the Israeli game is to enlist worldwide support and an omen of imminent invasion of Gaza outline Zionist Israel exists and create the world public opinion. For Kasaba, the source added that this drama it made up for Israel earn the approval of Bush's interests are not obvious to one of the Palestinian people at the same time stressing that the Palestinians had not fired any missiles at Ashkelon, warning data intriguers to adopt practical Palestinians until there is no excuse from the occupation to commit new massacres against the Palestinian people.

It is worth mentioning that Al-Quds Brigades have denied any missile launched at Ashkelon today as did Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades.

Although a number of press sources said that Islamic Jihad and the PRC both claimed responsibility, I have not seen those claims in the Islamic Jihad webpage, although they did praise the people who shot the rocket ("injuring of Zionist usurpers.") (I do not know the URL of any PRC webpage.) Firas did have a separate report of the PRC denying shooting the rocket.

This is quite strange.

My guess is that this is related to the brief kerfuffle that occurred last month when Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri chided Hamas for targeting women and children with their rockets, and Hamas denied doing so. Perhaps (as we saw yesterday) the Islamists are starting to get embarrassed by attacks that hurt clear non-combatants while at the same time they want to continue to make the lives of Jews in the Negev hell. Since that event, terrorist claims of responsibility for rocket attacks now claim to be aiming at military targets, even when they shell the crossings that provide them with food and fuel.

UPDATE: Or perhaps Firas is just incompetent. A PRC leader told YNet explicitly that his organization takes responsibility. And the PFLP is also reported to have claimed responsibility.