Hamas is the address for doing business

Mark Perry, Conflicts Forum - July 5, 2007
Hamdan identified the large Dagmoush clan as Johnston’s captors and said that now Mohammad Dahlan’s Preventive Security Service’s had abandoned Gaza, the Hamas leadership was focusing on gaining Johnston’s release. The resolution of the Gaza situation, and the imposition of political stability, had given Hamas the opportunity to focus on Johnston. After Dahlan’s forces were routed, on June 15, it became their top priority. “We are working to have the man secure and safe,” Hamdan said. “If we do anything wrong they may hurt him so we are making the pressure slowly in order to have him released.”

Hamdan was naturally reticent to give any details of Hamas’s strategy for gaining Johnston’s release, though it was soon clear that the leadership had adopted a less than subtle set of tactics to win his freedom. “We are talking to some senior members of the family, telling them this will not help the whole family, and they have to play a role. They can’t cover their backs while they are kidnapping this man,” Hamdan said. Another Palestinian leader was less charitable: “These people are not Rhodes scholars,” he said of the Dagmoush’s. “This is essentially a criminal gang, a politicized political gang, but a gang. They understand the use of force.”

At first, Hamas worked carefully — slowly bringing pressure against the family. The Hamas leadership was particularly sensitive to the pleadings of British officials, including Richard Makepeace, the British Consul General in Jerusalem, who held a series of quiet meetings with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza City. But the go-slow approach advocated by Makepeace soon gave way to a tougher line. The key to gaining Johnston’s release was convincing 28-year-old Mumtaz Dagmoush, the leader of the family, that there would be a steep price to pay should any harm come to the BBC reporter. Hamas’s message to Dagmoush was clear: if he cooperated, he and his family would be left alone, but if he did not — and if something were to happen to Johnston — then he and the Dagmoush would have to face the armed might of Hamas’s Executive Force, now firmly in control in Gaza.