Release From Gaza – Writing the Script

Michael Hedges July 9, 2007

A good film script needs a title. Or, to be precise, selling a film script needs a good story and a great title helps. The film script of Alan Johnston’s release from the bad guys is certainly being written now. The title is unclear.

The BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston is free. He’s home, in Scotland. All are pleased, with the possible exception of his kidnappers. One hundred and fourteen days under constant threat from murderous thugs provides spellbinding backdrop for the range of sins that make up Gaza, Palestine, the Middle East and the media coverage of it all.

So, where to begin this script? Obviously, beginning at the beginning. Alan Johnston is driving home from his BBC office in Gaza March 12th when snatched by masked gunmen. The scriptwriter asks: Is Alan Johnston the mild-mannered reporter or calloused war correspondent? Editor says: He’s from Scotland, probably Presbyterian, mid-40’s, balding, been with the BBC for years.

Give me a wide shot of Gaza, says the editor. How wide, asks scriptwriter? Not too wide: viewers might get confused.

Gaza is a miserable piece of land. Palestinians live there, if that’s an apt description. Alan Johnston has been telling their story for three years. He has been virtually alone, except for day-trippers and parachute reporters. No other Western journalist has stayed on that beat.

Since Israel decamped two years ago, functional control was ceded to warlords. Extortion, gun-running and kidnapping for cash are their pay-days. Are these warlords like the Somalia bad-guys from Black Hawk Down, asks the scriptwriter? No, says the editor; they’re rather thick. Like in The Sopranos, asks the scriptwriter? There are no psychiatrists in Gaza, says the editor.

Journalists in war zones live that abrupt time frame. Two Iraqi RFE/RL correspondents - Khamail Muhsin Khalaf and Nazar Abd al-Wahid al-Radhi – were machine gunned during the time Alan Johnston sat in his dark cell. Journalists targeted in Iraq rarely survive.

Power vacuums, like Gaza, are a bit different. Dealing for gain or simply survival is the only tempo. Western journalists and aid workers easily fall into the wrong category: poker chip.

After the first week, hopes for a happy and quick ending fade. Journalist kidnappings in the West Bank and Gaza usually end fairly quickly, deal made, ransom paid. Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig, grabbed in Gaza last August, were released after two weeks. Suggested ransom: $3 million.  This was taking far too long.

Johnston’s own accounts, relayed in a series of well-scheduled interviews since his release, portray his kidnappers darkly. They cover their heads and faces. They don’t engage in small talk. There is no guard with a conscience. They are thugs.

Is this where I lift from Apocalypse Now, asks the scriptwriter? You know, the scenes of Martin Sheen going crazy in that Saigon hotel while the world is burning? That film came out before I was born, says the editor.

While Alan Johnston sits solitarily, Hamas militants drive Fatah militants out of Gaza. The power vacuum changes; an ominous event. He listens to it all on the radio, BBC World Service, his employer. He is not alone. The world, through the World Service, follows his plight.

The BBC steadfastly denies any role in negotiations. They would yield, they say, to the professionals, all remaining anonymous. Posters with Alan Johnston’s picture appear all over Gaza, suggesting a public relations strategy to compliment negotiations. Every BBC newscast mentions Alan Johnston’s plight, a reality not lost on the BBC’s wide audience of world opinion leaders. Mission accomplished.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh sees a PR opportunity. After driving the Fatah faction out of Gaza just a few weeks earlier in the midst of Johnston’s captivity, Hamas was not itching for a blood-bath. But not backing down, either. Syria adds pressure.

Meanwhile, back at the camp of warlord Mumtaz Dagmoush the shift in air-flow is unpleasant. Cash-flow is trumped by survival.

The night of July 3rd Hamas’ mean and ugly Kassam Brigades militia encircles the warlords’ camp. Shots fired; clearly the end is near. At two minutes before midnight local time, Israeli TV reported “substantial movement.” With the eyes to watch everything that moves in Gaza, it was not a reference to the diplomatic.

Haniyeh’s deputy Abu Abed telephones Mumtaz Dagmoush: release him or die. A Muslim cleric attends warlord Dagmoush, fresh with religious zeal. Holding Johnston is un-Islamic. Dagmoush’ armed clan of more than 4000 will receive no cash but, just as good, guns and ammunition.

By quarter past three that morning, Alan Johnston is delivered. On the way out his guards give him a good thumping, just as a reminder, post-script from hell.

It’s a story about jurnos, says the editor. They are a strange breed. Don’t you remember A Year of Living Dangerously?

After Johnston’s release CNN’s Ben Wedeman, himself shot once, advised “Resist the strange attraction to Gaza for awhile.”

“It will become a place where we see almost nothing and hear almost no voices other than those of the kidnappers,” writes ex-BBC journalist, al-Jazeera program host and Palestinian Rageh Omaar in the Telegraph. “To keep quiet is to comply with what the kidnappers have begun: the completion of Gaza's isolation.”

“We'll have to be very, very careful,” said BBC head of news Helen Boaden, “ about how quickly we put anyone back in Gaza - if we ever do again.”

Got it, says the scriptwriter.

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