According to a Fatah leader identified only as Z., the Alan Johnston kidnapping is more complicated than we previously thought. In the middle of a report on Gaza anarchy, Haaretz writes:
Z. told Haaretz he believed the worst was yet to come. “Pretty soon there will be militants in each and every junction. Everybody knows who’s holding Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent kidnapped two weeks ago. It’s a large family, and they’re after money. Instead of surrounding the premises and acting against them, the security forces are negotiating with them,” he complains. “Breaking in their will cost lives, but there’s no alternative. You have to move in with force to restore order.”
What Z. doesn’t say is that all the large organizations, Fatah included, are trying to dissuade the renowned family from joining the rival faction. Foreign journalists who have been kidnapped and then released by the family say they were treated in an especially demeaning manner. They go on to say that the Iraqi influence was obvious in the clothing of their captors, their language and their methods of handling prisoners, including forced conversions to Islam.
The BBC’s options appear limited. Following last week’s fiasco over an Italian journalist abducted by the Taliban, public opinion won’t support negotiating with Johnston’s captors. After years of sugarcoating Arab terror, will the BBC finally wake up?
