June 29, 2008

Reviewed by Teenaz Javat

One sitting and you have read it. But that one sitting can change your perspective on life. That is exactly what 114 days did to Alan Johnston, a veteran BBC journalist, reporting from and living in what can be described as the most violent corner of the civilised world.

While being engaging, the book takes the reader through the minds of men, women and children who have nothing to lose but their lives.

Living in a cauldron of violence, the people of Gaza — all 1.5 million of them — have been herded into refugee camps for up to four generations. They are by now seething with rage. Fear and anger are never far away.

Ever so often, the pot boils over, and just as the intense heat of the desert can be hard to bear, so can the intense rage expressed against the Israeli occupants and the Americans who are the referee (although a partial one) in this ongoing battle.

All this rage was one day pitted against Alan Johnston, a lone British journalist who just happened to be there. By April 2007 Johnston was the only foreign correspondent living in Gaza, so he was kidnapped simply because he was there!

Kidnapped describes not only his ordeal but brings together his finest pieces of journalism from Gaza, Afghanistan and the emerging Islamic republics of Central Asia where he was posted from 1993 to 2004.

However, the bulk of the book addresses Johnston’s time in Gaza and also includes his reflections on his return to freedom and just how lucky he is just to be alive.

When Johnston was kidnapped on March 12 2007, millions of people throughout the world expressed their anger and determination to see him set free. The Palestinians were angry at the notion that one of their own could hurt a person who brought their collective plight to the attention of the outside world.

Before being posted to Gaza, he had visited the West Bank where he was making a radio documentary for the BBC and staying with a family in the city of Nablus. This gave him the chance to find out what everyday life was like in a place occupied by Israeli soldiers.

All this rage was one day pitted against Alan Johnston, a lone British journalist who just happened to be there.

In the 166 page volume Johnston admits that although he was scared that the Army of Islam — his kidnappers — could kill him at any time, during his captivity he repeatedly questioned his own reasons for coming to Gaza in the first place and having to put his parents and sister through such a harrowing ordeal.

Set against the danger of being kidnapped, he still felt that Gaza’s story was important, as it was the centre of the Palestinian drama, which in turn appears to lie at the heart of the rising tensions between the East and the West.

A case in point is the story of his guard Khamees, a rugged but handsome Palestinian in his mid-20’s who was with him throughout his ordeal. Khamees symbolises life in Gaza.

Khamees’ family like most others in Gaza had either fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel. He, like his father and grandfather before him, had been raised in the poverty and filth of a refugee camp.

This has turned him into a battle-hardened urban guerrilla. Khamees is symbolic of young people who see no hope and therefore turn to violence. There is no dearth of opportunities to engage youth in violence all across the Palestinian territories.

While dwelling on his own personal ordeal, the author-journalist throws ample light on the occupation, and how Arabs and Jews have been fighting for control of the narrow strip of land that stretches from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. The equation is simple: One of them has a country and one does not.

Israel, according to Johnston, will never give enough and the referee in this fight — the United States — will never force Israel to give anything.

That said, even if Israel were to withdraw from every inch of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, along with Gaza, the Palestinians will be left with only about 22 per cent of the land, while 78 per cent will still belong to Israel.

The question is, how much of that 22 per cent should the Palestinians be ‘allowed’ to have — and under what conditions.

The ease with which Johnston describes the complicated issue indicates that he, quite simply, is on the top of the subject. Seldom has one so lucidly told an audience just how polarised the conflict is.

The book is captivating, even though we know the end, which is that Johnston is free and alive to tell us this story.

Johnston’s interview on page 5

Kidnapped and other dispatches

By Alan Johnston

Profile Books, London

ISBN 978-1-84668-142-4

166pp. £7.99