JERUSALEM — Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist freed after being held captive in Gaza for 114 days, thanked thousands of people yesterday for their support during his ordeal.

Speaking to BBC staff in London via a link-up from Jerusalem he said he would be grateful for the rest of his life.

He drew laughs from the crowd when he said, “I’m going to do everything I can to stay out of trouble — I couldn’t bear it to ask you all to do all of that twice; just imagine the embarrassment.”

The BBC correspondent, who was seized by a group calling itself the Army of Islam, was freed in the early hours of yesterday morning. The ruling Hamas faction had surrounded the area where he was being held and gave his kidnappers an ultimatum.

Mr. Johnston told the BBC staff that he had been humbled to hear of people, most of whom did not know him, standing — often in the rain — week after week at vigils of support.

Describing himself as “quite a quiet bloke” he said he had been amazed to hear of even the Albert Square set of the TV soap opera “East Enders” falling silent in his honor.

Sporting a new close-cropped haircut he joked that he had been at the barbers to get rid of “that just kidnapped look.”

But in a sign of the trauma he has undergone, he said the ordeal felt like being “buried alive” and was “sometimes quite terrifying.”

He spent his first day of freedom in four months recovering at the British High Commission in Jerusalem.

Instead of hurrying back to see his parents, Graham and Margaret, in Scotland, he has decided to spend a few days with colleagues and friends in Jerusalem. The elder Mr. Johnston, who spoke to his son by telephone yesterday, said after such a long period in solitary confinement it was only right he “should decompress a bit.”

Hamas, the militant Islamist movement regarded by Britain and the international community as a terrorist group, sought to capitalize on its role in winning Mr. Johnston’s freedom.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said it was unfair for Britain to continue its boycott of the Hamas government. “We lifted the siege on Alan Johnston while the British government still insists on isolating us and laying siege to us,” he said.

Mr. Johnston, looking pale and haggard but otherwise physically unhurt, described how, after being bundled into a car by armed kidnappers on March 12, he spent 16 weeks in a series of dark cell-like rooms, occasionally handcuffed with a hood over his head.

He was threatened with execution on a number of occasions and appeared in a chilling video made by his captors wearing what appeared to be a suicide bomb belt. His voice, known to millions from his 16 years with the BBC, sounded a little faint as he said, “The last 16 weeks have been the very worst of my life It’s hard to believe that I’m not going to wake up in a minute in that room again. The BBC, which led efforts to keep Mr. Johnston’s case in the headlines, said it was delighted at his release, a sentiment echoed by many including the prime minister.

After three months of failed negotiations to free Mr. Johnston, progress came after Hamas seized power in Gaza and drove out militia and security forces loyal to its rival Fatah.

Hamas made it a priority to solve the Johnston case. It arrested two key members of the Dogmoush family, the clan that dominates the Army of Islam. Under interrogation, they gave information about where he was being held.

Asked if he would return to Gaza, Mr. Johnston said he had lived there for three years and spent four months as a hostage, which qualified him to say “enough already” of Gaza.

“Perhaps I will go back when Gaza is a member of the European Union,” he joked.