The arrest of the Irish language activist Sean O Muireagain by Israeli security forces in bizarre circumstances raises a number of important issues.
Israeli officials have now reportedly accepted that Mr O Muireagain was the innocent victim of a case of mistaken identity.
However, what has not been revealed is the source of the information which led to the 40-year-old west Belfast man's detention.
It is also disturbing that Mr O Muireagain could be held for questioning for more than three days, despite being able to prove from the start that he was in the West Bank region for completely legitimate reasons.
There have been suggestions that he was arrested because British intelligence services confused him with an entirely different person who may have been connected to a dissident Irish republican group.
Details were said to have been provided about an individual from the south Armagh area whose background bore no resemblance to that of Mr O Muireagain.
It was a striking coincidence that news of Mr O Muireagain's detention emerged a matter of hours after the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, arrived in London for a three-day visit.
As Mr Sharon has been pressing Tony Blair to stop dealing with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian authority, it was inevitable that enormous attention would focus on the arrest in the West Bank.
Within a relatively short period of time, it became clear that Mr O Muireagain had been travelling quite openly, on a British passport, with other members of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
As a governor of an Irish language school in west Belfast, he had been asked to develop links with a school in Jenin.
He had also written an account of his trip, under his own name and photograph, which was published in an Irish language newspaper before his arrest.
Despite this overwhelming evidence of his integrity, a request from the British Foreign Office for consular access to Mr O Muireagain was initially refused by the Israeli authorities.
There will be considerable suspicion in Ireland, Britain and the Middle East about the events leading to his detention.
Mr O Muireagain is now entitled to be given a full explanation about the motivation behind his arrest and to be assured that he will be able to move freely throughout the remainder of his visit to the Palestinian territories.
