stone cold

It’s coming up on five weeks since the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza and there is still no movement on his release. His parents made a heart-wrenching plea the other day, and the director general of the BBC went to meet personally with Abbas, who claimed that Johnston is “safe and well” but had nothing else to say.

Simon McGregor-Wood, the Jerusalem bureau chief for ABC News, writing in the Independent, has plenty to say about the situation:

The kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza reporter, has shocked the community of foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also having a devastating impact on the coverage of the story. … But ever since Alan’s disappearance, fewer and fewer of us have dared to go.

There have been reports of armed gangs turning up at the local TV production offices in Gaza looking for more foreign journalists to kidnap. That has scared many of us. The Western consulates, including the British one, continue to issue dire warnings and discourage us from going. The danger of further abductions seems real enough.

As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s this:

Until recently, Alan’s BBC colleagues were staying in Gaza working for his release. Now they have pulled out, fearing for their own safety. In the five years I have been here, working for ABC News, the situation has never been this bad, the threat against foreign journalists so real.

And then he gets into the gruesome details—Gaza, which a few weeks ago looked like a great story for journalists because of the very dramatic conflict between the various Palestinian factions, has turned frightful:

Ever since the Israelis pulled out their settlers and soldiers in the summer of 2005, Gaza has provided the battleground for competing Palestinian factions and ideologies. It is the home of Hamas and the place in which the very character of the Palestinian national movement is being fought over. Far from becoming the model of a future Palestinian state that some optimists hoped for, it has become a lawless and chaotic place and, by definition, a compelling story.  …

The environment was certainly hazardous and several reporters were caught in crossfire, and there were some isolated cases of intimidation. But this was all in the realm of manageable risk. The kidnappings are different - Alan’s in particular.

It is thought that the group responsible for the Fox abduction may also be behind Alan’s disappearance, and may be of a different calibre. But there has been no claim of responsibility and, as far as we know, no demands made and no negotiations started to secure his release. Talk to different Palestinians and you get different theories as to why Alan is still being held. But most think his fate has become entangled in wider internal political struggles, and is no longer simply about cash, jobs for the boys or some new guns.

When seasoned war correspondents in the Middle East get scared, it’s time to stand up and listen. Gaza is completely out of control, there is no Western press there to report on it, and all the while Abbas and Olmert are encouraged to make nice.

And Frank Rich thinks he wrote about the Greatest Story Ever Sold. Yeah, right. That’s because he only focuses on homefront political theater.