Leaders of a militant Palestinian group calling itself the Fatah Hawks had agreed to an interview with Hammer. Gary Knight, a British photographer for NEWSWEEK, went with him.
During the interview, one of the Palestinians abruptly announced that Hammer and Knight would not be allowed to leave. They were informed they were being detained to protest unfair American and British press coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hammer’s Palestinian driver and translator were also held. “They told us that we’d be kept until the world press took notice,” Hammer says. “In our total vacuum, sitting in this room, cut off from the outside world, we were a little bit panicked because we had no idea how effective they would be at getting the message out.”
After a while, their captors allowed Hammer and Knight one call each from their cell phones. Hammer called Richard Smith, NEWSWEEK’s chairman and Editor-in-Chief, and Knight called the AP, hoping to spread the word and speed their release.
Meanwhile, the group spread flyers around Gaza claiming responsibility for the abductions. “This operation comes as a message to the U.S. and British governments to reconsider their calculations and that all their citizens in Palestine and the Arab world will be subject to abduction and killing in case the full, biased and unjustified support continues to the government [of Israel],” the group threatened.
Despite the strong language, Hammer says he never feared his captors would hurt him or Knight. “They never threatened us or pointed their guns at us,” Hammer says. “They actually fed us one of the best meals I’ve eaten in Gaza.”
Hammer says it was pretty clear that the abduction had been planned in advance. “It looked like the press release had been written well ahead of time.”
Four-and-a-half hours later, the detainees were let go, shaken but unhurt. “We are enormously relieved they were released unharmed,” Smith said in a statement. “But we remain outraged that two journalists who were doing their job were subjected to this kind of treatment.”
Fatah officials immediately denied any involvement in the kidnapping, insisting that the kidnappers had no connection to the Fatah movement or to Palestinian president Yasir Arafat. The officials said that the Fatah Hawks no longer even exist. To Josh Hammer and Gary Knight, they seemed real enough.
