In the centre of Gaza City, there is a dense square mile of apartment buildings and orchards barricaded by burnt-out buses. It is here, protected by gunmen, that Gaza's notorious Daghmash clan resides, the prime suspects in the kidnapping of the BBC's Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston.
It is a neighbourhood at war with the Hamas-led Palestinian government. And somewhere in these streets, security sources believe, despite the Daghmash family's denials, the British journalist is being held. His kidnapping, it is now thought, has its roots in the clan rivalries that are tearing Gaza apart - and in two murders that passed without notice outside Gaza, where such political killings have happened almost every week since Hamas won control of the Palestinian government in last year's elections.
Ahmed Daghmash noticed. One of the dead, shot on 19 December, was his brother, Mahmoud. The other was a cousin, Ashraf. And so Ahmed, 35, an engineer, shut up his small office, grabbed a gun, and went to work extracting blood vengeance after Hamas refused to turn over his brother's killers. This began a cycle of revenge that many believe has drawn in the BBC correspondent.
It is for this reason, allege both Hamas and Fatah officials inimical to the Daghmashes, that Johnston, 44, was grabbed - not as a political prisoner but as a bargaining chip to pressure the Hamas-led government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to turn over the killers of Ashraf and Mahmoud to the Daghmash family for judgment under Islamic law. And while there is no suggestion that Ahmed Daghmash has been involved in any of the kidnappings, his grievances are shared by his whole clan. They are grievances that were shared with this paper in an extraordinary series of interviews a few weeks before Johnston was seized.
It is a story that starts with a killing. On 19 December Mahmoud and Ashraf Daghmash were armed and travelling with clan elders through the traffic-choked lanes of Gaza. The elders were on a mission - to mediate a truce between Hamas and another local family, embroiled in Gaza's lethal feuds.
Mahmoud, perhaps, was not ideal for the mission. He was a bodyguard for an official with the Fatah movement, once led by Yasser Arafat. Hamas and Fatah had been in a state of conflict close to civil war since the elections early last year. What is certain is that an angry encounter took place. A dozen or so Hamas gunmen confronted Mahmoud, words were exchanged and the cousins were shot dozens of times and left to die in the street. The double murder sparked widespread fighting between Hamas and Fatah that in a few weeks would leave hundreds dead and wounded.
'If my brother had died in the fighting between Hamas and Fatah, then I would not take my revenge, for my brother was a soldier,' Ahmed told The Observer in February. 'But this was not a war. They just murdered him. Until there is justice, I will kill any Hamas official I can find.'
They are frightening enough words in any mouth. But Ahmed, a Russian- trained engineer comes from a family that many in Gaza consider to be gangsters - controlling smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Gaza through which pass guns and other contraband. It is a trade, the clan's enemies allege, that has made the family rich, well armed and politically independent.
At first, the Daghmash family claims, it pursued the 'legal route' and called on the Hamas-led government to arrest the men responsible for the shootings. But a top official in the Hamas-led 'Executive Force,' the law enforcement body of the Interior Ministry, explained that militant loyalties prevented such arrests. 'If you ask me once, I am the Interior Ministry police force,' Abu Mutana told The Observer, explaining why no arrests were made. 'If you ask me twice, I am the police of Gaza. But if you ask me a third time, my friend, I am Hamas, only Hamas.'
Throughout February and March, Hamas officials were periodically killed or wounded in mysterious shootings, even after Fatah and Hamas had reached a ceasefire. People gossiped that it was the revenge of the Daghmash, but when asked directly Ahmed seemed to enjoy being coy about the shootings, preferring to let his enemies wonder who was killing them. But even as family elders would claim to have no direct knowledge of the killings, they would also argue - as family patriarch Mokhtar Hajj Daghmash did to The Observer in his home in February - that 'if [Ahmed] has done this, then it is his right'.
And Ahmed is not the only clan member at war with Hamas. Far more sinister and dangerous are the family's ties to fundamentalist Islamic groups such as the Popular Resistance Committee and Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), both reportedly headed by Mumtaz Daghmash, whom Israelis tthink masterminded last summer's kidnapping of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, still in captivity.
Mumtaz appears to have been the moving force behind a rash of kidnappings of Western journalists and aid workers in Gaza, in exchange for money and influence from the Palestinian government. Until the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the majority - with the exception of the seizure of a Fox Television news crew - ended with the safe release of the captives within a day or so.
With a certain bitter irony, it has been this use of kidnapping as a negotiating tool - or its failings - that has supplied the second powerful motivation for Johnston's prolonged seizure: the claims that Hamas and Ismail Haniyeh had reneged on commitments made to end other seizures. Daghmash family members say Haniyeh's government has failed to deliver on promises made to Mumtaz and his militants.
Their complaints are articulated at a night-time meeting. I had been told we were going to meet Daghmash fighters. Instead the driver halts suddenly at a pitch-black field just outside the city limits, leaving the car to return after a few minutes in a black mask, holding an assault rifle and asking for my mobile phones. Then half a dozen masked, uniformed men holding automatic weapons and rocket-launchers appear out of the dark. Introducing the largest man in the group as the Sheikh, I am told that the meeting is with Mumtaz Daghmash's Jaish al-Islam.
It becomes clear that the hostility between the Daghmash/Jaish al-Islam fighters and Hamas goes far beyond the issue of revenge for individual deaths.
Hamas, the Sheikh explains, has failed Gaza by not providing security or governance and for showing little interest in the fight against Israel. He criticises the movement too for being a 'proxy of Iran' and its brand of Shia Islam, which is considered heretical by the fundamentalist Sunni Muslims of Jaish al-Islam and the Popular Resistance Committee.
And while the Sheikh and his men are angry about the refusal to deliver the killers of Mahmoud and Ashraf, it quickly becomes clear how kidnappings are crucial to their way of dealing with Israel and Hamas. '[Hamas] follows one way and we follow another. We worked with Hamas to kidnap the Israeli soldier to get prisoners released. But Hamas wants something else. It has failed as a government and now claims all the credit for the operation because it wants the people to respect it more as fighters.'
I ask the Sheikh about the kidnapping of the Fox TV crew, released after two weeks after converting to Islam. He seems to admit involvement in a roundabout way, while continuing to criticise Hamas. 'Haniyeh [the Hamas Prime Minister] made many promises in exchange for the release of the "foreign infidel" journalists. But he did not keep any of those promises. Again, this pits our group and our leader against Hamas over these issues.' None of which bodes well for a speedy resolution to Johnston's captivity, after a week in which a British diplomat met Haniyeh to press him to expedite the journalist's release.
A few days later, Ahmed and a dozen Daghmash fighters are on patrol. Peeling a lemon, Ahmed explains: 'I will never forget the men who killed Mahmoud and never forgive. Fatah-Hamas? Their problems will never be solved because of this. They did not make the arrests, so I must kill the men who killed my brother.' And Alan Johnston must remain a captive.
Life and times at the BBC
· Alan Johnston was born in Lindi, Tanzania, on 17 May 1962.
· He was educated at Dollar Academy in Dollar, Scotland, and Dundee University and gained a diploma in Journalism Studies from the University of Wales in Cardiff.
· Johnston joined the BBC in 1991 as a sub-editor in the World Service newsroom before becoming the BBC's correspondent in Tashkent from 1993 to 1995.
· From 1997-98 he was Kabul correspondent.
· Johnston became a programme editor on The World Today and then a general reporter in the World Service newsroom.
· His three-year posting to Gaza as BBC correspondent began in April 2004. He was due to leave Gaza when he was seized.