Gas Attack?

When I read the Gulf News, I constantly find myself having to go to the internet to find out what exactly they are talking about.

Take today's editorial about Israel: "UN should deal firmly with Israel". The first sentence states: "Lebanese civilians are hospitalised because of a gas attack by Israel in the past two days." When I saw this, my jaw dropped. How in the world did I miss the news that this chemical weapon attack took place? How did none of the news programs, newspapers, or bloggers that I access everyday at mention this? Why isn't this the biggest story in the world?

So when I try to go else where to find out more about, I can barely find anything. AlJazeera.com (not the news network) only says that Israeli planes dumped "suspicious green balloons on Lebanon", resulting in the hospitalization of eight people with dizziness and nausea. These balloons have been turned over to Italian soldiers for analysis.

The Israel National News claims that the balloons were "released in Northern Israel as part of a promotional campaign" which then drifted across the border.

The only other mention that I can find is from All Headline News (no idea who these guys are) which presents both versions: "Lebanese media and Israeli media disagree over the context the balloons end up in southern Lebanon. According to Haaretz newspaper, an Israeli daily, the balloons were part of a promotional campaign for Ha'ir, a Schocken group newspaper. Lebanese media, oppositely, said that the balloons were dropped by Israeli planes and were poisonous."

I don't know for sure what happened here. It doesn't seem as if anyone does yet. But I have to say that this seem very unlikely. It seems really unlikely to me that if the Israelis really were going to use chemical weapons that they would deploy them with balloons. If you were going to deploy chemical weapons via balloon, is dropping them from airplane even possible? I mean, wouldn't the windstream rip balloons open as soon as they were released? I also know that dizziness and nausea are symptoms that you can cause in yourself via panic.

The really bizarre thing about the Gulf News editorial? There are exactly zero articles in the paper reporting on this incident (at least none that I could find).