52 Days in Captivity

Since today is World Press Freedom Day, spare a thought for Alan Johnston, the BBC's Gaza correspondent who has been in captivity since March 12. Yesterday, Palestinian President Mahmhoud Abbas said that his security forces are aware of Johnston's location and the identity of his kidnappers. But the fact that they have yet to move on that information -- out of concern for Johnston's safety, supposedly -- underscores what a lawless place Gaza has become.

Friends who have been to Gaza recently have described it as Falluja 2004 -- a Disneyland for fundamentalists, militants and tribal criminals. The problem for Israeli security forces is that there is very little that they can do to put this jihadi factory out of business. After the debacle of the Lebanon War, no Israeli politician is going to risk a large scale military incursion that would at best bring about only a temporary halt to missile attacks, and at worst end up as yet another quagmire with an ever rising body count.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem