Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in Gaza since March 12, was handed over by his Islamist captors to ruling Hamas officials on Wednesday, a Palestinian source close to negotiations for his release said.

The source and another Palestinian involved in the talks both said they saw the 45-year-old Briton being taken into the care of officials from the Hamas movement, which seized full control of Gaza three weeks ago.

"He is sitting with his colleagues from the BBC office in Gaza," one of the witnesses said. "He is talking to them and he looks fine and well."

Johnston, the only Western correspondent working full-time in the troubled coastal enclave, was the longest held of a number of foreign correspondents who have been abducted in Gaza in the past several years.

His captors called themselves the Army of Islam, an al Qaeda-inspired group with links to one of Gaza's powerful clans.

They issued Web videos showing Johnston and seeking the release of Islamists held prisoner by Britain and other states.

Most recently, after Hamas officials threatened to free him by force from the clan's stronghold, Johnston was shown wearing a suicide belt with the warning he would die if that happened.

Hamas forces earlier Tuesday surrounded an area in Gaza City inhabited by the clan where Army of Islam has the bulk of its supporters and where Hamas believed Johnston was being held.

Hamas' police called the Executive Force said it would "continue to besiege the area until British journalist Alan Johnston, who was abducted a few months ago, is freed."

Abu Mujahed of the Popular Resistance Committees told Reuters: "Efforts are under way to conclude all the remaining issues."


Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/...eut/index.html

I'm happy about this

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Tony Blair quote - I obviously need to get to the gym.

LOL

Whoooooooooo ..... be still my beating heart.

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Read this post quick before the mods delete it!

Many thanks to Hamas and the majority of the Palestinian people for their determined efforts in securing Alan's freedom.

Kiddnappings of journalists in Gaza is not uncommon - but they are all released unharmed in the end - as opposed to the Iraelis that prefer to shoot journalist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Sto...666883,00.html

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=3881

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/58167/

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Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Marx (G.)

After 114 days in captivity. And released immediately after Hamas took over Gaza in a bloody coup. Can you say "publicity stunt to bolster support of an illegitimate taking of power" ?! Of course you can't. Riddle me this, How many people where arrested for this abduction ?!

There's always one guy out there that wants to bring Israel into this. First of all they are not "all released unharmed in the end", but yes, these kiddnappings are "not uncommon":
The Committee to Protect Journalist is outraged by the killings of a journalist and a media worker, who were shot on Sunday in Gaza City.
Gunmen wearing presidential guard uniforms stopped a taxi carrying Suleiman Abdul-Rahim al-Ashi, 25, an economics editor for the Hamas-affiliated daily Palestine, and Mohammad Matar Abdo, 25, a manager responsible for distribution and civic relations, Editor-in-Chief Mustafa al-Sawaf told CPJ today. The taxi was stopped at 2:30 p.m. in a high-security area southwest of Gaza City that is controlled by Fatah, al-Sawaf and other journalists told CPJ.
News accounts vary on the ensuing events; al-Sawaf said the two men were beaten before being shot on a public street. Al-Ashi died at the scene, while Abdo was taken to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City where he died at 3 a.m. today, al-Sawaf and CPJ sources said. Al-Sawaf said his description was based on interviews with eyewitnesses and an account that Abdo provided his brother before he died.
( http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6902.shtml )
Secondly, Israel has the highest level of freedom of the press in the the region. Even most of the journalists working in Gaza and the WB reside in Israel when the day is over. What you don't seem to understand is that kidnapping journalists is obstruction of the information leaving the area, buy the Palestinians !! In other words, if ou don't write pleasent things about Hams, who knows if you will make it home alive. So yes, Israel does sometimes kill journalists, as do Palestinians (usually intentionally), but it's not to repress any stories. Plenty of journalists write critical reviews of Israel and don't fear for their lives. And one more thing Lune, when Israel forces journalists to convert to Judaism before they are released, please let me know.

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"The key difference between cats and lies is that cats only have 9 lives" - Mark Twain

I think it was stupid of the Palestinians to kidnap Alan Johnston and I am glad he has finally been released.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: A media watchdog group called for an investigation Friday into the shooting of a cameraman for Hamas TV who lay injured on a battlefield in Gaza.

The International Federation of Journalists, in a statement from Brussels, Belgium, denounced Israel for what it said was "a vicious and brutal example of deliberate targeting of a journalist."

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/...-Cameraman.php

A personal bias


I'm happy to declare the loaded agenda for which I was imprisoned - human rights and social justice

Ewa Jasciewicz
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian

Life for journalists wanting to report from Israel has just become harder. I was detained two weeks ago by the Israeli authorities while trying to enter the country in order to complete a number of commissions for the British magazine Red Pepper. I have been held in custody at Ben Gurion airport ever since, while appealing against deportation. Yesterday, an Israeli judge ruled that the evidence against me, which has not been seen by my lawyer, is admissible, and so my appeal will be heard by the supreme court in the near future.

Article continues
During my initial interrogation at the airport in Tel Aviv I was asked if I knew any violent Palestinians. Responding in the negative, I was told: "We think you do, but we can accept that you don't know that you do."

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that the Israeli state sees all Palestinians as potential terrorists. Thus anyone who associates with them is, at best, an unwitting associate. This view now seems to be extended to include politically engaged journalists such as myself.

To write well you must write about what you know well. In the course of my political activism I have visited the Palestinian communities in Gaza and the West Bank on many occasions. Ironically, however, this time I had planned to write about the Israeli side of the struggle.

I believe it is hugely important to diversify the representation of Israel both within the peace movement and within the national media. For many on the left, Israelis are seen only as soldiers, killers and snipers. Civil disobedience by peace and justice movements within Israel is largely invisible. Groups like Tay'Ush, the Arab-Jewish partnership for peace, and the growing refuseniks' movement represent a mounting Israeli consciousness, are vital to resolving the conflict. This is, of course, anathema to the political right within the country.

Israel likes to define itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. But democracy means a plurality of views, of voices and of positions. The fact that I write from a leftwing position should not render me voiceless.

When what can be said, or heard, or read, is decided by those in power, it can lead to a social psychosis, a false reality; and this is not only undemocratic but also totally destructive to any society. I believe that I was particularly targeted because of my involvement with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent, Palestinian-led organisation that stages protests against the occupation. I am proud to be associated with it. White westerners are not supposed to leave their comparative comfort zones and get involved in violent conflicts in the Middle East. Nor are they supposed to put their bodies between bullets, tanks and children. They are not meant to dismantle government security walls, accompany ambulances, live and laugh with, and grow attached to, "security threat" families and communities.

Yet by doing all this, the ISM volunteers have catalysed genuine relationships between internationals and Palestinians, and also between Israelis and Palestinians, contradicting the belief of the Israeli state that coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis is impossible.

The human rights violations committed by the Israeli army are a reality that many supporters and citizens of the country would like to ignore. Recently, when I told a former soldier about the killing of Baha al-Bahesh, a 14-year-old boy from Nablus, that I witnessed two years ago, I was told: "You dreamt it." Yet my eyewitness account of the death received considerable press coverage at the time. Writing about life in the occupied territories is a form of activism, and communicating those human rights abuses to a wider audience is an essential part of my advocacy journalism.

Yesterday I accepted in court that I had interviewed terrorists as part of my journalistic work, but maintained that I had not been duped into helping them. I am a journalist and I know when people are being manipulative. I know myself.

I am happy to declare that my writing has a biased and loaded agenda: the promotion of human rights and social justice. I am motivated by the belief that writing can serve as an agitational tool for those who wish to challenge oppressive realities, demand grassroots power and reclaim lives lost to racist and colonialist agendas.

None of this is dangerous to the people of Israel. Rather, it holds out a hope that Israelis will not always be prisoners in their land. As the grassroots peace and anti-capitalist movement swells across the world, new borders - ideological and physical - are crossed, and new alliances, politics and consciousness can be forged.

The struggle to allow engaged journalism within Israel is a fight to create real Israeli democracy, in the hope that the country's social movements can, together with the Palestinian social movements, create real peace.

· Ewa Jasciewicz is a British-Polish journalist and peace activist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...290869,00.html

Israel has other methods of controlling the media, they shoot you or stop journalists having access to fulfil their commissions.

Glad you think that it's stupid, and yet it happens entirely too frequently. Glad you avoid the whole converting journalists to Islam before their release.

So he was on a battlefield ? I hear a lot of injuries happen there.

That's funny, the Flemish usually have nothing but love for us Yids. Besides, I wonder what they say about freedom of the press in any of the other countries in this region.

She's a Polish Brit and the media outlet is The Guardian. Yup, this isn't going to be too biased against Israel and Jews.

This was in 2004. Are you telling me that Journalists haven't been reporting the Palestinian side of the story for 3 years ? Hogwash. This is a smalltime reporter, writting for an openly Socialist British Left Wing (certainly not pro-Israel) rag venting.

So let me get this straight. Israel is detaining you and violating your civil rights, yet you freely report on this in what is essentially a blog ? Israel must be really really stupid. And while we are at it, dang those Israelis with their appeals system and lawyers etc. I wonder how this would have worked out in almost any Muslem country. I can see it now ... "Ms Jasciewicz, but Saudi Arabia believes that you are associating and perhaps abbetting terrorist influences, would you like to appeal ?"

Well that's not exactly true. Later on in the article she says:

So not only did she know who she was dealing with, she implies that she sabotaged the wall !! Political oppinions aside, she should not be physically medeling with Israel security aparatuses. She should therefor nt be surprised to be stopped coming in.

As for her journalism, it's absolutely amazing. She is interested in glorifying the Palestinians and the minority Left Wing Israeli movement, and that's it. She even states that the Left Wing Israeli movement is the key to solving the situation, and yet does not state what that solution is. I guess a 1 shared state solution, but she is so vague, it's neerly impossible to tell. She is certainly not interested in discussing why 90%+ of Israelis are Moderates or Right Wingers. Are those 90% political nutjobs who hate peace ? I consider myself part of that 90% and I'd love to see peace. In general her assesments regarding Israel are complete cow manure as plenty of articles critical of Israel have been published since 2004.

Ashley, you have yet to address the fact that in comparison, Israel is a Mecca (ironic I should use that term) for journalistic freedom in the region and just about every news organization outside Al Jazeera knows it.

You, as usual, refuse to associate Islam with it, despite the fact that all the kidnappings are attributed to Allah etc etc and that there have been forced conversions.

The fact that you have to pull silly reports from 2004 that are self evidently false to attempt to equate what is going on journalisticly in Israel with most of the Muslem World, is almost evidence in itself as to how bad it really is within the Muslem community. Islam has a long history of putting down any critical thaught about it. Ooops, I hope that doesn't earn me a fatwah.

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"The key difference between cats and lies is that cats only have 9 lives" - Mark Twain

Your statement is absolutely true and it is with Lebanon a true Democracy in the region also.

Sometimes I wonder if my distaste for some of the actions of the State of Israel appears to others to borders on anti-semitism, I hope truely not. I have loved several Jews in my life and can seperate an individual from the State.

But when I see the collective punishment of the Palestinian people for the actions of a few and the destruction and killing of vast amounts of Southern Lebonan funded/aided by many Western powers it is easy for me to be anti-Israel - and I forgive myself for adding the extra little jibe at Israel's expense in my original post !!!

Anyway it's been a while since we last communicated Janglo - I hope you are well - Scotland is bonnie as usualy but Oooooooh the rain .....

I appreciate our open discussions Lune. Glad to hear all is well in bonny land. I enjoyed Scottland tremendously. Glad to hear that you are still as fisety as ever.

I think that Israel and Lebanon would have very minimal issues where it not for the influence of the PLO, Hezbula, and Syria in it's affairs. Lebanon is a beautiful country and relies heavily on tourism and foreign investment. The war last summer was a disaster for them as well as Israel. I would love to someday be allowed to travel to Beirut and mingle with the visitors and locals. I hear it used to be absolutey spectacular. Hope it will e again soon.

I have long ago given up the notion that Israel is run by angels. I have accepted that certain actions are taken for the sake of civil security. I do also understand that some actions taken by the State of Israel go beyond this and it offends me personally, as I love this country. Soldiers turning a blind eye while Jewish religious zealot chilren throw rocks at Arab children is a disgrace and is disgusting. I sometimes find myself having to seperate my love for this country from the actions of it's politicians. Overall, however, I think we show a tremendous amount of restraint. More than I suspect most Western countries would show where they in our shoes. This is not an excuse for allowing bad things to happen, it's just my opinion.

I am curious what your solution is to the Israeli /Palestinian issue. Do you believe that anything short of Israel disbanding would stop the violence ? Do you believe that if we opened the borders we would no longer have to fear killings ? Do you believe that Israel should not target planners and executioners of terror attacks against us, or should we do so only if they are alone, which is impossible ? Do you believe that Israel should not have taken any action when it's soldiers are being abducted to be used for extortion ? I understand your frustration with Israel. I am just as frustrated frankly. That's why I'd love to see seperation. I believe that many many Palestinians want to live in perfect harmony, but I als believe that there are plenty that would like to see nothing more than every Israeli dead, and will not be satisfide untill al of Israel is under Muslem control. It's frustrating, as I have friends in East Jerusalem who are Palestinian, and they admit that many Palestnians will never be happy until Israel is disolved.

Looking forward to a good 2-3 months of no rain and heat myself. Do have some in-laws in Hull and they have been complaining about the flooding. Hope it get's sunny for you soon mate.

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"The key difference between cats and lies is that cats only have 9 lives" - Mark Twain

There is a long history now of tit-for-tat in this conflict, so I shall not bother to address the question how should Israel react to Soldier Kidnaps and missiles being fired into their land - nor shall I address the issue of the 1000's of Prisoners that Israel holds and their Apartheid policies against Palestinians and the several UN resolutions that Israel is in breach of.

But I will give my 2pence worth about where to start to make a lasting solution. It is most definately a 2 State solution, and the return to the "1949 Armistice Line" Borders. Israel must have peace and security and it must also refrain from intimitating the Palestinian State for example Palestinians must have control over their own air space and sea ports.

This could start as a basis for negotiations.

It will be long and difficult and a major task to convince some parties to accept Israel's right to exist - as it will be hard to convince some within Israel to giveup land won in years of conflict.

The sooner we all start to talk about the issues the better and we must stop all the tic-for-tat killings and kidnappings and stop the poverty and opression suffered by many people - because when people have nothing and feel oppressed than they will commit many horrid acts on other humans.