Kidnappings in Gaza
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Add Emilio Morenatti to the list. The 37-year-old photographer for the Associated Press is now the 11th journalist to be kidnapped by terrorists in the Gaza Strip since 2004. Mr. Morenatti, a Spanish citizen, was taken by gunmen early yesterday as he left his apartment to head to work. Happily, Mr. Morenatti was freed, unharmed, by the end of the day. His kidnapping remains cause for alarm, however, because he’s not alone. Kidnapping journalists is becoming something of a pastime for terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Which only makes the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to do anything about it all the more puzzling.
Freshest in the memory of Americans might be the case of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, two employees of Fox News abducted in August who, with a detention lasting 13 days, have been held the longest by kidnappers, but the case of Messrs. Centanni and Wiig is all too typical. Despite frequent protestations to the contrary, what there is of a government in the Gaza Strip has been missing in action in respect of restoring law and order to the patch of land it purports to be governing. When Mr. Morenatti was abducted, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh promised “maximum efforts” to secure his release, and told the interior minister, Said Siyam, to get to the bottom of it, but don’t hold your breath for resolution.
That is, after all, the same Said Siyam who was reported by the AP to have said, in the wake of the release of Messrs. Centanni and Wiig, that he didn’t expect other journalists in Gaza to face abduction in the future. Considering that, as far as we can tell, neither the Fox journalists’ kidnappers nor any of the other kidnapping thugs of the past two years have been brought to justice, more kidnapping is a near inevitability.
Nor is it just journalists who are being seized. A British aid worker, Kate Burton, and her parents, have also been kidnapped in recent years. The Burton family was held for two days in January. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was kidnapped on June 25, still languishes in captivity. Each case appears to involve one of only a handful of terrorist militia organizations. Each of these kidnappings is extremely important, and if the Palestinian authorities can’t stop such transgressions, it is hard to imagine what else they could do that would be of value.