Viktor Orbán’s reckless football obsession

The Hungarian prime minister has been lavishing public money on his favourite sport for years. Could it be his undoing?

“‘This is my land, which I donated to the club,’ he said, motioning toward the horizon. In fact, the land officially belongs to his wife. ‘Here, here and here, there is room for expansion, there are plans,’ Orbán added. We marked the moment with a selfie.” – Dan Nolan and David Goldblatt with Viktor Orbán at the Felcsut stadium.

With one main street and a couple of grocery shops, Felcsút looks like any other sleepy Hungarian village. That is until you catch sight of the football stadium, which dwarfs the other buildings in this town of 1,800 people, about 25 miles west of Budapest. The Pancho Arena, completed in 2014, is surely among the world’s most striking football grounds, more cathedral than stadium, with a swooping shingled roof, copper turrets and ornate wooden vaults thrusting upward around the interior.

Bearing the nickname that Real Madrid fans gave to Hungary’s greatest footballer, the striker Ferenc Puskás, in the 1950s, the Pancho Arena is home to a club also named in his honour, Puskás Akadémia FC, which was founded in 2007, and was recently promoted into the Hungarian first division. The stadium has a capacity of 3,800, more than twice the size of the town. But much as Puskás himself had little connection to Felcsút – he began his club career in Budapest, and never set foot in the small town – the stadium isn’t really here for the locals.

This much becomes apparent when you enter the complex, where parking spaces have been reserved for an array of Hungarian oligarchs – men of great wealth and noted proximity to the government. There is a space for the banker Sándor Csányi, the country’s richest man and the head of the Hungarian football association, and another for István Garancsi, who owns nearby Videoton FC, and his fellow construction oligarch László Szíjj. There are two spaces for Lőrinc Mészáros, the mayor of Felcsút and the chairman of Puskás FC, who has vaulted into the upper echelons of Hungary’s rich list since his childhood friend Viktor Orbán became prime minister in 2010. And there is one space, of course, for Orbán himself, who spent part of his childhood in Felcsút, and played semi-professional football here for a fourth-division side during his first stint as prime minister in the late 1990s.

When we arrived at the Pancho Arena on an overcast Saturday afternoon last spring, the word around town was that Orbán would attend that day’s match. When he is not travelling abroad, Orbán often spends weekends at his dacha in Felcsút. Since returning to office (he also served as prime minister from 1998 until 2002) in a populist landslide in 2010, Orbán has amassed more domestic power than any other EU leader. He has rewritten Hungary’s constitution, filled the constitutional court with allies and made an erstwhile political colleague the chief public prosecutor. His supporters head thousands of previously independent bodies, including Hungary’s national bank, its election committees, cultural institutes and sporting federations.

Orbán has not been shy about steering funds to the area that is closest to his heart – football. But it is not easy to ask him questions about Hungary’s stadium-building frenzy, because he rarely gives interviews, other than on state radio, where he is inevitably flattered by friendly journalists.

For Hungarian oligarchs and foreign journalists alike, the best chance of an audience with Orbán is a visit to the Pancho Arena, which is why the car park outside the ground fills up with expensive vehicles whose owners are seeking proximity to power. “Even if you hate football, you have to go to these matches,” said Gyula Mucsi of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. “It is the only place that the elite are willing to socialise with anyone outside of their small circle. Big construction and infrastructure development projects and plans which require a lot of money are basically decided in the skybox.”

“‘Even if you hate football, you have to go to these matches,’ said Gyula Mucsi of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. ‘It is the only place that the elite are willing to socialise with anyone outside of their small circle.’”

On this particular Saturday afternoon, a couple of hours before kickoff, Orbán’s parking space was still vacant. But perhaps we would see him walking into the ground. After all, it is only 20 metres from his house.

Now 54, Orbán has been a public figure for more than half his life. Increasingly remote, what remains of the 26-year-old who burst into Hungary’s national consciousness during the 1989 change of regime is best viewed at Felcsút. His obsession with football is legendary: Orbán is said to watch as many as six games a day. His first trip abroad as prime minister in 1998 was to the World Cup final in Paris; according to inside sources, he has not missed a World Cup or Champions League final since.

Inside the Pancho Arena – whose sweeping curves and timber beams embody Orbán’s nationalist fondness for “organic Hungarian architecture” – crowd sizes rarely reach four figures. But the prime minister stares down at the pitch with great intensity, paying little attention to the oligarchs and ministers surrounding him. Still, there is much to be gained from staying close to Orbán: at last count, seven people on Forbes’s list of the 33 richest Hungarians had close government links. Last year’s highest climber – going up to number eight – was Orbán’s pal Mészáros, the Felcsút mayor and football club chairman, who tripled his own wealth and went on a spending spree that included the acquisition of 192 regional newspapers in one day.

With nearly all the country’s media in friendly hands, and a divided opposition struggling to adapt to the new reality, Orbán has entered his imperial phase. Newspapers that challenge the government find themselves closed down; independent NGOs are threatened with police investigations and branded as “foreign agents”. The government is an “expression of God’s mercy”, he grandly declared on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

“Newspapers that challenge the government find themselves closed down; independent NGOs are threatened with police investigations and branded as “foreign agents””.

But if the stadium in Felcsút, where the king is surrounded by his courtiers, looks like a symbol of Orbán’s absolute power, it also threatens to become a sign of imperial overreach – a lightning rod for critics and a target for investigators. The European commission has paid a visit to Felcsút to inspect the vintage railway Orbán built, using EU funds, to connect his two boyhood villages. And the Hungarian supreme court has issued two rulings that will force the government to release closely guarded financial information about its spending on sports and stadiums, which may reveal the true cost of Orbán’s football obsession.

It is an obsession that began early. Most of what we know about Orbán’s childhood comes from interviews he gave more than a decade ago. Initially, the Orbán family – he is the middle child of three brothers – lived in cramped conditions with his paternal grandparents in Alcsútdoboz, the next village along from Felcsút. His father, Győző, thrashed him “once or twice a year”. Győző was a Communist party member, but political discussions were not encouraged at home. “The milieu from which I sprang had no specific traditions whatsoever,” Orbán said later. “I came from such an uncultured, from such an eclectic … something.” It was his grandfather, a one-time docker who had fought on the eastern front during the second world war, who turned him on to football. The young Orbán no doubt heard many a story about Hungary’s heroic teams of the interwar years, and their gallant World Cup final defeats in 1938 and 1954.

When he was 10, the family moved to Felcsút. Orbán worked in the fields at harvest time, sorting potatoes and pulling beets. It was back-breaking work. “You have to hit the rats hard the first time, or else they run up the spade and bite you,” he learned. When the family moved again, up the road to nearby Székesfehérvár, he saw warm water come straight from the tap for the first time, at age 15. Although academically gifted, Orbán described himself as “an unbelievably bad child: badly behaved, impudent, violent”. By force of will, rather than talent, he got into the youth side of the Videoton, a top-flight team based in Székesfehérvár, who reached the Uefa cup final in 1985. Orbán enjoyed the social opportunities that football offered: “The game brought together people from different backgrounds. Every time I changed team, I also changed cultures.”

By 1988, Orbán was a law student in Budapest, where he and 36 other students founded Fidesz – the party he still leads. As communism crumbled in 1989, Orbán rocketed to prominence as a youth leader. As some 250,000 people gathered in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square for the reburial of Imre Nagy – the former prime minister who was executed for his role in the 1956 Hungarian revolution – Orbán delivered a famous speech denouncing the Soviet Union and demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Hungary. It was a moment of nerve and opportunism – the speakers that day had allegedly made a gentleman’s agreement to sidestep the subject of Russia’s departure – but with it, he entered the history books.

“A lesser-known detail of that tumultuous era is that the Fidesz leaders who currently occupy Hungary’s three most powerful posts […], all played together on the same five-a-side team.”

A lesser-known detail of that tumultuous era is that the Fidesz leaders who currently occupy Hungary’s three most powerful posts – Orbán, President János Áder, and László Kövér, the speaker of the national assembly – all played together on the same five-a-side team. On Friday evenings in the late 1980s, Hungary’s future rulers turned out for the goofily named law-student side Fojikasör – loosely translated, it means “the beer ish flowing”. Zsolt Komáromy, who regularly played against Orbán with a rival squad, recalled that for the prime minister, “playing football was a way of releasing his aggression. One time he took the ball out of play. When everyone else stopped, Orbán said, ‘It’s not out’, and carried on, and scored. He was overwriting the laws: sort of ‘I’ll tell you when it’s in or out.’”

Orbán became an MP in 1990, and quickly established himself as the leader of Fidesz, then a liberal party. He mixed with pro-European liberal intellectuals, who recognised his talents, but teased him over his smalltown ways. But when Fidesz was unexpectedly wiped out in the next elections, Orbán dropped liberalism and rebranded his party as the flagbearer of a new right-leaning middle class. After a successful election campaign in 1998, which promised “two kids, three bedrooms, four wheels”, Fidesz formed a coalition government with two smaller parties – and Orbán, then 35, became Europe’s youngest prime minister.

Fidesz politicians “started coming to the games in black cars, and bodyguards would stand next to the pitch,” recalled Imre Wirth, another former five-a-side opponent. While his colleagues stayed with The Beer Ish Flowing, the prime minister decided to play semi-professional football for Felcsút, then in the fourth division. After a narrow election loss in 2002, Orban turned further toward nativist populism, refusing to concede defeat on the grounds that “the people” could never be in opposition. He ceased attending parliament, and set about targeting the votes of those “left behind” in the transition from communism.

When a scandal engulfed the Socialist government in 2006, Orbán grabbed his opportunity and took to the streets. As the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution approached, rioters – many of them security guards from Ferencváros, Hungary’s biggest club side – channelled the spirit of ’56 and stormed the national television headquarters. On 23 October 2006, the first day of the official commemorations, Orbán gave a speech at the end point of a radical nationalist march. Riots broke out again, and police officers without ID badges shot plastic bullets at protesters. A leaked US diplomatic cable worried that Orbán was “liable to play with fire”.

The next year, Orbán and Mészáros set up the Puskás Academy – on 1 April 2007, which would have been Puskás’ 80th birthday – with initial capital of just €500. Meanwhile, Mészáros, along with Orbán’s wife, Anikó, and his father, began to acquire more land around the club. Three years later, Hungary’s political centre lurched to the right, and Orbán secured an outright majority. Armed with a constitution-changing mandate, Orbán proclaimed a “ballot-box revolution” and promised to complete what he called the “unfinished regime change” Hungary had begun in 1989.

Felcsút has not been the only beneficiary of Orbán’s football construction boom. In Budapest, we paid a visit to the new stadium of MTK, a venerable football club whose president, Tamás Deutsch, is a co-founder of Fidesz and one of the party’s representatives at the European parliament. “This is not a stadium, it’s a football castle – it’s a new concept,” Deutsch told us, sitting on an Italian sofa in his own executive box. Deutsch goes back a long way with Orbán, and they regularly kicked a ball around at that fabled law school in the late 1980s. He was always a “demanding teammate”, even in these casual kickabouts, Deutsch said. “When somebody made an unforced error, he would shout at them,” he recalled.

MTK’s slightly curious new ground – it has concrete walls behind each goal, rather than stands – was built for €27m (£24m), 50% over budget. It was funded through Orbán’s controversial TAO scheme, which allows corporations to divert taxable profits, with minimal disclosure, to sports clubs and cultural institutions. Meanwhile, direct state funds have built a new 24,000-seater stadium for Ferencváros, the Groupama Arena in Budapest, for an official cost of €63m (£55m), and the 20,000-seat Nagyerdei Stadion in Debrecen for €55m (£48m).

The Pancho Arena was a relative snip at €12m (£10m), but the Felcsút club also receives around €10m (£9m) per year through the scheme. In Mezőkövesd, a town of around 17,000 in northern Hungary, a new 4,200-seater stadium was built for the local club – whose chairman is the Fidesz deputy minister András Tállai, also head of the national tax authority. Tállai showed his gratitude by commissioning an oil painting of Orbán and Puskás.

Deutsch defended the stadium-building scheme against critics who note that 40% of households in Hungary still live below the breadline. “If we gave the financial support only to sports, this argument would be fair,” he told us. “But we also give to education, health, infrastructural development and so on.” The government’s critics might reply that it currently spends more on sport than on teachers’ salaries.

To understand the significance of football for Hungarians, Deutsch explained, you have to look at their history. At the beginning of the 20th century, he said, “Hungarian football was one of the leading cultures”. Indeed, in the interwar years, Hungary was part of a wider culture of sophisticated passing football – known as the Danube school – which included teams from Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Bratislava. This style reached its highest expression in the legendary 1950s Hungarian national team, the “Magical Magyars”. Captained by Puskás, the most prolific international goal-scorer of the 20th century, the team was tactically innovative and rich in individual talent, including Nándor Hidegkuti, the revolutionary “false number nine” after whom Deutsch’s stadium is named.

The Magical Magyars, known at home as the Golden Team, dazzled the football world in a four-and-a-half-year unbeaten run. That 31-game sequence included a gold medal win at the 1952 Olympics, and a victory in what was then dubbed the match of the century, a 6-3 thrashing of England at Wembley in 1953. To prove that was no fluke, Hungary humbled England 7-1 in a return fixture in Budapest the following year. That glorious run ended with a shock defeat to West Germany in the 1954 World Cup final – “the biggest success of Hungarian football history and the saddest day of Hungarian football history”, in the words of György Szöllősi, the editor-in-chief of Hungary’s leading sports daily. (The legend of the 6-3 victory lives on in the nation’s collective memory – it’s the name of a pub, a betting website, and a brand of spritzer.)

The Hungarian revolution of 1956 brought the Puskás era to an abrupt end, as many of the Golden Team’s players, on tour when the uprising broke out, did not return. The decline was slow but steady. “We had many tragedies,” Szöllősi said. Perhaps the bitterest of all came in Mexico at the 1986 World Cup. “The Hungary team was top of the European rankings,” Szöllősi recalled. “The first group game was against the Soviet Union and we lost 6-0. Against the Soviet Union, in 86!” he said. The defeat spawned a bestselling literary post-mortem called Gyógyíthatatlan – a punning title that can be loosely translated as “Terminally Six” – which sold hundreds of thousands of copies, many of which appear to reside in secondhand bookshops in Budapest.

“If you want to understand Viktor Orban’s relationship with football,” Szöllősi said, “you must see that between the two world wars, football was very important.” Once memorably described as “Orbán’s football megaphone”, Szöllősi is Hungary’s football ambassador, with official diplomatic status granted by the prime minister. “Viktor Orbán wants to ‘make Hungarian football great again’,” Szöllősi said.

“Once memorably described as “Orbán’s football megaphone”, Szöllősi is Hungary’s football ambassador, with official diplomatic status granted by the prime minister. “Viktor Orbán wants to ‘make Hungarian football great again’,” Szöllősi said.”

He acknowledged, though, that Orbán’s football habit is seen as a liability among his largely deferential party colleagues. “Before the 2010 election, the campaign leaders told him that he was not allowed to go to the Champions League final, because this is a really unpopular thing in Hungary – starting to build football. Everyone says: ‘Oh no, it’s absolutely impossible, you cannot do that, because Hungarian football is shit.’”

Orbán’s campaign to make Hungarian football great again has attracted attention, but not for the reasons he might have hoped. (Attendance at most clubs remains poor, with grounds usually less than 20% full.) For opposition parties, however, the stadiums have become a ready symbol of Orbán’s hubris. “You can talk about constitutional law and people get bored, but show Felcsút and people know exactly what you are talking about,” the opposition activist Gábor Vágó said. In May 2017, near the end of the football season, Vágó organised a protest of about 300 voters outside Orbán’s Felcsút house, where they threw counterfeit money depicting Orbán and Mészáros into the air.

At the protest, Ákos Hadházy, the co-chairman of a centrist opposition party, Politics Can Be Different, declared: “2018 is the last chance to defeat Orbán. The press is under pressure now. Populism tells Hungarians: ‘We will steal your money, but we will defend you from the terrorist refugees.’ But we will have a few million forints, and the government will have 10bn,” Hadházy said.

Orbán’s opponents scored a victory in February 2017 with a petition against the government’s bid to host the 2024 summer Olympics in Budapest, which Orbán had personally endorsed two years earlier. A campaign called Nolimpia argued that healthcare, education, rural infrastructure, housing and poverty were more pressing issues than sports stadiums in Hungary, and collected more than 266,000 signatures from Budapest residents for a referendum on the Olympic bid. The prospect of a humiliating defeat at the ballot box spooked Fidesz so much that they retracted Budapest’s candidacy – and the petition drive launched a new centrist youth party, Momentum, in the process.

More recently, Hungary’s supreme court has also ruled – after a series of actions brought against ministries, sports federations and local councils – that corporate contributions to the TAO scheme, which had been shrouded in secrecy, were indeed public funds, and must therefore be disclosed. In the course of the legal battle, the government had attempted to classify the donations as “tax secrets”, but the court ruling means that Puskás Akadémia, and other clubs, will now have to divulge the names of the companies supporting them. The government has not yet released this information, and activists expect it will wait until after the next elections, which will be held in April or May this year.

Back at the Pancho Arena on matchday, the setting offered more drama than the football. There were about 400 people in attendance, but half of those were in the VIP sections and executive boxes, while the press section was appointed in a manner that might be expected at a stadium 10 times the size. Orbán emerged from his executive box as the game began, accompanied by one of his ministers, Miklós Seszták, who owns a second-division club in the north-east. Mészáros, the mayor and chairman, watched from his own box nearby.

After a scoreless first half, we approached the club’s press officer with an interview request – and a copy of David’s 2006 book The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, hoping that it might establish our footballing bona fides with the prime minister. “There is very little chance you will get to meet Mr Orbán,” she said. Orbán did not emerge for the second half, and when Puskás Akadémia broke through in the final minutes, their manager vainly looked up at the executive box for approval. Still, Orbán was nowhere to be seen.

But as the players trundled off the pitch, the club press officer, looking astonished, invited us to Orbán’s box, where we found him facing the pitch, with the book in hand and Szöllősi standing beside him. A tray of petit fours stood on the counter, behind which three young, uniformed servers stood in a sleek chrome kitchenette.

“I’m just breezing,” Orbán said, thumbing through the book. It soon became clear that the book’s epigraph, by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, had secured our audience. “‘A style of play,’” Orbán read aloud, “‘is a way of being that reveals the unique profile of each community and affirms its right to be different.’ I like that, that’s very important!” he said. “I don’t know whether we have Hungarian football – but we must have!

“Football,” he continued, “is a strange combination of being free and being a soldier. You have to be in the squad, but it’s also creative. Because this is the dilemma of all modern societies: to be organised and to be free. On the pitch I can find it, in politics it’s more difficult.”

“Football,” he continued, “is a strange combination of being free and being a soldier. You have to be in the squad, but it’s also creative. Because this is the dilemma of all modern societies: to be organised and to be free. On the pitch I can find it, in politics it’s more difficult.”

For Orbán, the connection between football, politics and national greatness was obvious. “Hungarians have a critical approach to all civilisations,” he said, “and we think that modern society is very dangerous for the kids. Sport is good for the dangers of modern civilisations.

“Now we made a good progress [in reviving Hungarian football], but everybody is critical here. Nobody will agree with me, everybody says it’s shit, but the fact is we are improving very well, and probably we are progressing – isn’t that right, Gyuri?”

“Absolutely Mr Prime Minister,” Szöllősi replied.

“Why is this not published in Hungarian? We should do that Gyuri, we should publish it,” he said, waving David’s book at Szöllősi. Warming up, Orbán articulated his theory of football. “This academy – this kind of stadium and all the surroundings – it’s part of a concept. My concept, it’s my concept anyway, my concept is that football does not belong to business. Football belongs to art – look at the stadium, it is art.

“Don’t calculate your next agreement with your agent and that kind of shit – that is not the essence. The essence is art, the ball and the team. So that’s my concept, and this is the concept of the academy – football belongs to art.

“My grandfather used to tell me,” Orbán continued, “when you see a good match, you have to hear the music – if you don’t hear the music, it’s not a good game. So therefore, in Hungary, whatever championship the Germans win, we will never say it’s a good football, because what we are hearing is not a music, but a robotic technological noise.”

At this point, Orbán put on his coat and said: “Let’s have a look at the academy from the top.” He led us out of the box. “Look,” he said, pointing to one of the wooden fan vaults holding up the roof. “It is art.”

Behind Orbán, we clattered up a steep flight of metal stairs. On reaching the top, he opened a trapdoor and climbed up on to a track that runs around the roof. We stood there, alongside the prime minister of Hungary, surveying his football stadium. “This is my land, which I donated to the club,” he said, motioning toward the horizon. In fact, the land officially belongs to his wife. “Here, here and here, there is room for expansion, there are plans,” Orbán added. We marked the moment with a selfie.

By now, the sky had darkened a little. Unfazed by the drizzle and the vertiginous drop, Orbán, in a long black coat, continued the tour. “This is my house,” he said, pointing down at his dacha. “My wife hates the stadium: she says it ruins the view from the kitchen window.”

Downstairs, the prime minister led us across the courtyard in front of the stadium into a room in the academy building that was dominated by a pair of three-metre photographs of Puskás – one as a naive debutant, the other as the stalwart Madrid proto-galactico. In the floor, Orbán pointed out, are Puskás’ footprints, illuminated under glass. Slightly lost for words, one of us remarked that they were unexpectedly small. “Yes, it’s better to have small feet, you can get under the ball,” said Orbán, himself a short man, kicking the air.

“Sooner or later we will set up the ‘Puskás Institute’, because here we have an academy, we have schools, so it’s a small universe. Now we have a team, but we would like to set up a museum, an education centre and a publishing house also. For the people.”

He began to reminisce about his own playing days. “When I was first-time prime minister, in 98, I even played in the team of the village. It was in the fourth league … and I played every week with the team. Can you imagine, in the small villages – you know, the shouting? You can’t imagine [the abuse] – until I scored!” His face lit up with satisfaction, and he launched into another story, about receiving a phone call from the president of the US after Hungary became a member of Nato in 1999. “I was training,” Orbán said, “and somebody said: ‘Bill Clinton is calling.’ I said: ‘Don’t joke, I have training, call me back in five minutes.’ He had called me because of the war with Yugoslavia, he had some proposals to discuss. I stood there on the phone [on the pitch] … like a pig.”

Fifteen years later, Clinton called Orbán an “authoritarian capitalist” during an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: “Usually those guys just want to stay for ever and make money.”

As our surprise tour neared its end, Orbán described his plans to expand his “academy concept” across the borders into Serbia, Romania, and Ukraine – eventually, into all of the lands that once belonged to “Greater Hungary”, before 1920. “We are doing it for the kids … on the territories where the Hungarians are living.” At home, meanwhile, he continues to build.

A 68,000-seater national stadium – named for Puskás, of course – is being readied to host four matches during the European Championships in 2020, with a budget in excess of €600m. It will be similar in size and design to Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena, at roughly four times the cost. But on the evidence of Hungary’s failed World Cup qualification campaign – which included a draw against the Faroe Islands and a loss to Andorra – the national side may not even qualify for the Euros.

Thanks to his symbolic role in the fall of communism, Orbán has been a legacy politician from the off, keenly aware of his place in history. But Hungary and its neighbours are littered with pharaonic follies of the past, built by rulers keen to erect their own monuments. Across the border in Romania, the home village of the unlamented dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu boasts a 30,000-seater stadium, now used by a team languishing in that country’s fourth division.

Even in Orbán’s inner circle, some fear the Pancho Arena may eventually be regarded as a folly. One friend of the prime minister, speaking on condition of anonymity, candidly recalled the moment, over dinner, when Orbán announced his plan to build a stadium in Felcsút. “We were a little bit like, ‘Do you really need this stadium here?’ This is his child side, he’s a fanatic, he’s enthusiastic about soccer … but it’s too big. I don’t think this is the best place – in 10 or 20 years, I don’t know how they will maintain and manage this building. I don’t think it was a good decision.”

But as Hungary’s most powerful football supporter led us out into the centre of his Neverland complex and bid us farewell, there was no sign of buyer’s remorse. “May I confess,” he said with a smirk as we left, “the Parliament building is nicer.”

Gaza. It’s time for change

Il Venerdì di Repubblica, June 2018

Razan al-Najjar, volunteer with the Medical Relief, was 21, and had a white coat and her hands raised high when on the border, as she tried to tend to an injured, was shot, and killed. It was the 1st of June. And all over the world, her picture turned into a symbol of Gaza. But in Gaza, what turned into a symbol was rather the shattering of that picture: during the funeral wake, in her house. In a Hamas raid. Because she was a Fatah activist.

And she had to be just one among many.

The demonstration of the following day was expected to be the largest since the start of protests. Palestinians deserted it.

For Gaza, the March of Return is the first grass-roots initiative ever. Every Friday, since March 30, thousands of Palestinians gather along what nobody refers to as border, here, but fence, because on both sides of the barbed wire, you are explained, there is actually the same country: and they try to cross it. Israel believes it is just a Hamas ploy to divert the attention away from its internal troubles. From its endless confrontation with Fatah. But groundwork went on for months, with the involvement of all Gaza. Because it is life, here, to drive you to rise up. What’s hard, it’s rather to stop you: the wounded, with plasters still on their heads, rush straight away back to the fence. “But it ended as it always ends. When a new idea works, and the world starts talking of Palestine again, Hamas and Fatah and all the factions seize it: and they waste it all. Unable to convert that visibility, that momentum, into political effects,” says Atef Abu Saif, Gaza’s most famous novelist. “And somehow, it’s like when a rocket hits Tel Aviv. For a few minutes, it’s general excitement. But then? What did you change?,” he says. “Nothing.”

Gaza has been cut off from the world for more than ten years. There isn’t even water anymore. There is only salt water. Sea water. You feel sticky all the day, in Gaza. All the days, for years. And every now and again, an F-16 comes and bomb.

Every now and again, suddenly, you die.

We have got familiar with the brutal figures of Gaza. Nearly 2 million Palestinians live here, and literally “here”: in 2017, Israel issued only 9,600 exit permits. Per capita, it means to get out every 201 years. 80 percent of the population live on aid. 50 percent, is food insecure, in UN jargon. 50 percent is hungry. And 45 percent is under 15. And yet, in Gaza there is a word that tells more than all these figures: Tramadol. Which is a painkiller. And it is the most popular drug, here. So many youth, in the world, use ecstasy, cocaine, meth, to feel high until dawn. But in Gaza, if you are in your twenties, you just want to fall asleep and forget.

Every two, three days there is a suicide attempt.

No one talks of politics. The priority, here, is to find food. The few who still get a salary, with their only salary support brothers, fathers, cousins. Because there is like no government anymore. It collapsed. There are just mosques, and mutual help. In downtown Gaza, a shabby lawn is now a camp of makeshift shelters, a patchwork of old, rancid blankets tied together with twine. Inside, families haven’t a single biscuit, a slice of bread. Nothing. Like the family of Hamam Maat, 32 years old and five children, the youngest still in his cradle, his skin red from bug bites. They were evicted ten days ago. They received 750 shekel every three months, about 200 dollars, but the ministry of Welfare run out of money. And there is no point in trying to make the kids smile: they stare at you hugged each other, in a corner. Speechless. “Israelis fear that with the border open, we would get in and attack. But I don’t have a shekel. I couldn’t even reach the border,” he says. In 32 years, he’s never had a job.

Many of the 13,000 wounded of these weeks underwent amputation. More often then not, they didn’t need it. But they could die from infection: there were no antibiotics.

Palestinians believe it’s time to negotiate. Not only because they are exhausted, but because Israel, they say, is focused on Iran, on the Syrian front: it can’t have a second front in Gaza. And indeed, the fresh wave of rockets and airstrikes that the world is following with concern, here is read as a sign of dialogue: Hamas fires its rockets late in the evening or early in the morning, when they are unlikely to make victims, and Israel, on the other hand, so far has been targeting basically empty areas. As if it were a kind of Morse code. Because in the end, Hamas, too, can’t endure a new war: it is totally alone. And totally broke. It depends on tunnels. But al-Sisi’s Egypt, a staunch opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood Hamas derives from, flooded the few ones still functional after the 2014 attack. While the Gulf countries, that are deeply wary of Hamas because of its ties with Shia Iran, are busy with conflicts and refugees all across the Middle East: and cut donations. Even though, when you ask Palestinians what their strategy is, at this point, their first reaction is always the same: outrage, and they say: Why you don’t go ask Israel? Who is to blame?, they say, The prisoner, or the warder?

Isam Hammad is one of the masterminds of the March of Return. Whose goal, he says, is return, actually. Period. Because should even the border be open again, he says, it is too late. Gaza is too small. Too overcrowded. There is no space for agriculture, he says, for industry. There is no space for a sustainable economy. The only option is to return: to return to what is today Israel – out of 1,9 million Palestinians, here, 1,5 million are refugees. Or more often, truthfully, more exactly: they are descendants of refugees. And so if no one, but really no one, is willing to give up on the right of return, then, matter-of-factly, not all Palestinians would leave. Quite the opposite. Many Palestinians would simply like to work in Israel. Commuting. As they were allowed to do before the Oslo Accords: when there were no walls, no checkpoints, no borders, they say, and Israelis were used to come here to buy fish. It is probably the only point all Palestinians agree upon, and not only in Gaza: there was more peace before peace.

Shams al-Assil is 19 and lives in al-Shati, one of the poorest areas, they are 11 in one room with rotted walls. And yet for me what’s really tough, she says, it’s not the fridge that it’s not that it’s empty, there is no fridge at all, because there is no electricity: what’s really tough, she says, is watching my friends passing by with their books and bags, in the morning, ready for university. Because she can’t afford it. If tomorrow Eretz opened, her mother says, if tomorrow Gaza were normal again, first I would go to Jerusalem. But then, she says, I would return here. Because she is from Be’er Sheva. “And Be’er Sheva is like Gaza. It’s just 30 miles away. If we have to live this way for other seventy years, only for me to return to Be’er Sheva, I can stay here,” she says. “In the end, Gaza has also the sea.”

Palestinians urge, urge negotiations. Now or never, they say. Not because they trust Israel. The opposite. Because they don’t trust Israel. At all. And so, what’s the point of waiting for change?, they say. We must bring change.

But their leaders seem to be stuck. Today I’ve met Basem Naim, I tell friends in a café. Basem Naim is Hamas spokesman for international affairs. And in Gaza, and beyond, is held in high regard. “Really? And what did he say?,” they ask with one voice. He said they want the end of the siege, I say. An immediate, unconditional end of the siege. “And then?”, they ask. And then he said that the siege is immoral, I say. Not only illegal. “And he didn’t say anything else?”, they say. They look at me with disappointment. “But that’s obvious. Of course we want the end of the siege. We didn’t need all these dead to say what we’ve already said countless times.”

Because what hurts Palestinians the most, is that if after so many years they are on the verge of breaking down, it’s actually because of the Palestinian Authority: that a few months ago cut again salaries. And stopped paying for the electricity. That now is on for only fours hours per day. Even the antibiotics that could prevent all these amputations: they are blocked in the West Bank. It is Mahmoud Abbas’ extreme attempt, or as you are told here, extremist attempt, at forcing Hamas to step down. Even though it is definitely not easy to understand who enjoys more support, Hamas or Fatah. Because they have been all elected in free and fair elections, yes, as they always remind you: but in 2006.

And Mahmoud Abbas, too: his mandate expired in 2010.

For Ahmed al-Asi, honestly, it’s not such a big deal. He is 29, and he is one of the many fishermen who now fish only for themselves: because no one can afford fish anymore. “We have Hamas, that doesn’t talk to Israel,” he says. “And we have Fatah. That waits for the international community to talk to it. But Gaza has two borders, not one. Egypt could open Rafah, and solve it all. We get no help from Arabs, and we should expect it from the US?”, he says.

Of the Palestinian Authority he says nothing. “They get all richer by the day.”

And so, in what has been announced as the Friday of all Fridays, the 8th of June, the last Friday of Ramadan, only a few Palestinians eventually show up. About 10,000. Mainly brothers, fathers, cousins, friends of the 123 killed so far. They resolutely head toward the army, with these kids who tell you: I am 12 years and 3 wars old, and it’s impressive: straight toward Israel, toward its snipers, all lined up in front of us: because the border, here, is simply a sand flat where you are completely visible. Always. Completely exposed. Your only shield, is the black smoke of burning tires. Palestinians have only stones and kites, these famous kites with oily rags tied on top, that set on fire the fields across the fence: and that more often, with the wind, land on us. And yet, they are a powerful symbol. They cost a few cents: but they challenged the Iron Dome, with its missile batteries worth 100 million dollars each. “They are not a weapon, they are a message”, a boy says. “We can’t win. But Israel can’t either,” he says, while from the back, other boys push toward the barbed wire the first tire, to kick off the day, and the crowd, around, gives way, and cheers on. But the tire is too heavy, and tips over, on an old, thin man who looks already worn out, and risks to get torched. Everybody laughs. That’s Palestine!, they say, as the first injured start to arrive: from behind the black smoke, you don’t even hear gunshots. Suddenly, simply, the man next to you falls on the ground. And his shirt turns red. If this is a march, it is rather a march in reverse: instead of advancing, Palestinians come back. On stretchers. One after the other. Rushed toward hospitals, toward the second front: the front where the battle is fought with denied antibiotics. And when a kid who is tinkering with a long twine, and a sort of giant butterfly net, catches a drone, all Palestinians, all together, forget Israelis to huddle around the drone that comes down: and take a selfie. At sunset, there will be four dead, but this Friday, basically, ends here. With the drone paraded in the streets of Gaza as a saint statue.

For now, it’s the only feasible achievement.

The next day, the border is a quiet sand flat again. A few Palestinians nap in the shadow, some are graduates, some amputees: all are jobless. A woman in black arrives. Her son was killed. He was supporting all the family. And no one even asked her how she is doing, she says. She is desperate. She grabs hold of one of us, crying, and she collapses, exhausted, Help us! Help us!, she screams, on the ground, in the dust, as a man, rudely, takes her away.

Yahya Sinwar: “We don’t want war any more.”

La Repubblica, October 2018

When I say that I’ve met Yahya Sinwar, the first question is always: And where? In a tunnel? No. In his office. But also in other offices, visiting ministries or a shop, a factory, a hospital, in cafés, in ordinary homes of ordinary families. For a hour or three hours. Alone or not. For five days. Free to talk of everything. And with everybody, in my spare time.

No restriction whatsoever.

And nor I was scared. Never. I never had any reason to feel in danger.

We’ve got this interview after long negotiations. As that’s normal, indeed – especially because in the last years I have been covering Syria most of my time, and I had somehow lost my connections with Hamas. And so I was helped by other Palestinians, and first and foremost by Mustafa Barghouti, who is not from Hamas, and quite the opposite: he comes from the left. But he is one of the brokers of national unity governments. And national unity, here, is what everyone wants. I was supported by many renowned Palestinians, but many ordinary Palestinians as well, who have been calling all the time, texting, writing, stopping me in the street for a tea: because they wanted Hamas to speak, finally, to open up, but also because they wanted Hamas to be heard. They wanted us to open up. Yahya Sinwar says twice: We are part and parcel of this society, regardless of numbers. And that’s true. Also Palestinians who would never vote for Hamas, criticize the ban on Hamas. They say: They won free and fair elections. It’s democracy.

And I was helped by Islamists of other countries, too. I won’t mention them: but they remind us how the Palestine question, which is today a bit overlooked, with jihadists in the spotlight, is still a priority for all Muslims. Emotionally, not only politically.

I say “helped” not because I needed to convince Hamas that I am not a spy. Fortunately, my work speaks for itself. No. But I needed to convince Hamas that I was familiar with Hamas. Familiar with its history and background: and so, that I wouldn’t have misunderstood anything. I was in a Hamas office, last June, and on the wall there was a portrait of its founder, Ahmed Yassin. There was also another journalist. And he said: Quite remarkable how al-Qaeda is still a benchmark.

He had mistaken him for Ayman al-Zawahiri.

And yet, once reached our deal, again: I never had any reason to feel in danger. Never. And that’s something I had no doubt about, honestly. There is some opposition to the ceasefire that Hamas, the Hamas of Yahya Sinwar, is striving to achieve. I know. But with Islamists, and perhaps, in the end, with everybody, it’s just a matter of transparency. If you are honest, if you observe rules, you don’t get in trouble. And actually, at that point, you are their guest, before being a journalist: they would protect you against everyone and everything.

They are men of faith. And like all men of faith, they keep their word.

What I have been impressed by has been rather reading again the books on Hamas that I studied at university. About ten years ago. They had just won the elections, and the embargo was just starting.  There were street clashes with Fatah, at the time, and raids against radio stations, music, alcohol. Cigarettes. There was a Police of vice and virtue. And lot of tension. And those books, talked only of Sharia law. Of a future of thieves’ hands cut off. Segregated women. Not a page that could be of any use, now. They were all books on Islam. On the compatibility between Islam and democracy. And instead, ten years later, we have just talked of the occupation.

And its compatibility with life.

I arrived with a hijab, that’s true. As a sign of respect. But they all insisted: and in the end, I had to take it off. As a sign of their respect for me.

Gaza changed deeply. And actually, except that is collapsing, physically, but also psychologically collapsing, it’s beautiful. Because it’s on the sea, with the sun. And in some streets, the sand, the palm trees, and all these climbing flowers: at every step, you are reminded of what it might be. And it has one of the best cafés I have ever been. Which is just a wooden cart, in the end, with a boiler and old iron lamps, and old empty whiskey bottles, and a portrait of Che Guevara, among all the photos of Umm Kulthum, and the candles in little cans, because there’s no electricity, and they have only Nescafé, served on plastic tables worth a dollar each: but it has the atmosphere of a Paris café – because it’s the hangout of all these twenty-somethings who have never been out of here, and yet, I don’t know how, they speak fluent English: and they have countless projects, endless energy. And every time, they want to meet me despite I’m translated into Hebrew, too, among other languages. Israel here means tanks and airstrikes. Nothing else. Most of them have never seen an Israeli. This is not Ramallah. You live badly, here. But really badly. Everywhere you come across wounded, amputees. And this brutal poverty. They would have all the right not to want me here. And instead, of course, I am Italian, not Israeli, and it makes a difference, but they say: It’s not Italy to besiege us. It’s not Italy that we have to address.

They all want to address Israel.

And Yahya Sinwar is like Gaza: normal, despite it all. In the few photos I found online, he has this tough expression. While, no: he is a man like any other. A simple man, always in shirt. Grey shirt. His distinctive feature, is somehow not to have any distinctive feature. Like all his advisers. There are many rumours about tunnels. About smuggling. And in Gaza there are some millionaires. Some wealthy businessmen. But while I was with some Hamas leaders, one evening, and that’s actually what we were talking about, suddenly they all got up. I though of an army raid: and instead, the electricity was back. And they all rushed to charge their phone.

Because like everybody else, they don’t have electricity. Water. Nothing.

A clarification. I am well aware that for many readers this is a hard read, that touches private and deep emotions. And I am neither Arab nor Jewish: I am in between Israelis and Palestinians with the humbleness of a stranger who never forgets that will never experience what they experience. Never feel what they feel. We talked more in detail of some of the most sensitive issues. Like the tunnels. And the prisoners, and prisoners’ remains, still in Gaza.  But sometimes, I decided to write less than what I could, and wanted, to write, not to interfere with the ongoing negotiations. Because the priority here, for all, is the ceasefire. And some day, possibly, peace.

And there is no scoop worth the risk of hampering it.

And if that’s been my choice, perhaps it’s also because, if I think it over, Yahya Sinwar has actually a distinctive features. He listens a lot. He never decides alone. But then, once he decides, he really decides: he’s got courage. And determination. He is ready to significant steps.

And he insisted to end the interview with the word it ends with.

And speaking of words. I noticed that he never said: Israel. I might be wrong. But as he always used synonyms like: Netanyahu. Or: The army. The other side. And most of all: The occupation. What I am sure of, he never said: The Zionist entity. The Jews.

Only: The occupation. The occupation.

I know next to nothing about you. You are said to be quite private. A man of few words. You rarely speak with journalists. And actually: this is your first time with Western media. But you have been leading Hamas for more than a year. Why speaking now?

Because now I see an opportunity for change. For achieving security and stability, here. Finally. For all. And I don’t want to waste it.

An opportunity? Now?

A golden opportunity, yes. Now.

To be honest, what looks most likely, here, is rather a new war. I was in Gaza last June, and it was just as usual. Flying bullets, tear gas. Wounded everywhere. And then airstrikes, rockets. Other airstrikes. A golden opportunity to get shot. Since April, since the start of this latest wave of protests, you’ve had nearly 200 dead.

And yet the truth is that a new war is in no one’s interest. For sure, it’s not in ours: who would like to face a nuclear power with slingshots? But if we can’t win, for Netanyahu a victory would be even worse than a defeat. Because it would be the fourth war. It can’t end as the third one, which already ended as the second one, which already ended as the first one. They should take over Gaza. And they are trying their best to get rid of the Palestinians of the West Bank, and keep a Jewish majority: I don’t think they want other two million Arabs. No. War achieves nothing.

It sounds a bit odd, from someone who comes from the military wing of Hamas.

You are a war correspondent. You like war?

At all.

And so why should I? Whoever knows what war is, wants no war.

But you have been fighting for all your life.

And I am not saying I won’t fight anymore, indeed. I am saying that I don’t want war anymore. I want the end of the siege. You walk to the beach at sunset, and you see all these teenagers, on the shore, chatting: and wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like. It’s breaking. And should break everybody. I want them free.

Borders have been basically sealed-off for 11 years. Gaza has not even water anymore. Only sea water. Salt water. How is living here?

What do you think? 45 percent of the population is under 15. We are not speaking of terrorists: we are speaking of kids. They have no idea of what Hamas is. What Zionism is. They are simply kids. I want them free.

80 percent of the population depends on aid. And 50 percent is food insecure – 50 percent is hungry. According to the UN, shortly Gaza will be unfit to life. But in these years, Hamas has found resources to build its tunnels.

And luckily. Else, we would all be dead. There were times when even milk was banned.

You’ve got what I mean. Don’t you think you bear some responsibility?

Responsibility is on the besieger. Not on the besieged.

Why you didn’t buy milk, rather than guns?

Hadn’t we bought it, we wouldn’t be alive by now. We’ve bought it. Don’t worry.

So Hamas has been doing well in government.

But what do you think? That being in power in Gaza is like being in power in Paris? We have been in power for years in many municipalities, exactly because of our reputation for efficiency and transparency. Then in 2006 we won the general elections: and we were blacklisted. There is no electricity, it’s true. And this affects everything else. But do you think that we have no engineers? That we are unable to build a turbine? Of course we are. But how? With sand? You can have the best surgeon in town: but you are pretending him to operate with fork and knife. Look at your skin: it’s already peeling away. Here if you arrive from outside, if you arrive from the world, you get sick straight away. What should grab your eye, is that we are still alive.

And so, you have apparently offered Israel a ceasefire. Negotiators are working around the clock. What do you mean for ceasefire?

A ceasefire. Nothing from their side, nothing from our side.

Nothing nothing?

Nothing.

And for how long?

That’s not the main issue, honestly. It can be for one month or six months, one year. And then another year. And then another year again. No, what really matters is rather what happens during these first, let’s say, six months. Because if the ceasefire means that we don’t get bombed, but still we have no water, no electricity, nothing, still we are under siege, it makes no sense. Because the siege is a type of war: it’s just war through other means. And it’s also a crime, under international law. There’s no ceasefire under siege. But if during these six months, on the contrary, we see Gaza returning to normalcy, step by step, if we see not only aid, but investments, development, because we are not beggars, we want to work, we want to study, to travel, like you: we want to live, and to stand on our own – if we start to see a difference, then we can go on for other six months. And then for other six months. And other six months. But there is no peace without justice. Without freedom and justice. I don’t want the peace of the graveyard.

Ok, but… Maybe it’s just a trick to reorganise yourself. And in six months, to go back to war. Why should Israelis trust you?

First of all, I never went to war: war came to me. And my question, in all truth, is the opposite. Why should I trust them? They left Gaza in 2005: and they simply reshaped the occupation. They were inside: now they block borders. Who knows what’s really going on in their mind? And yet, that’s what trust is all about. And perhaps, that’s our mistake. We always think in terms of: the first step. Who’s gonna do the first step, you or me? But in the end, trust is a joint first step.

Ok, but… Again. Should the ceasefire not work…

But for once, can we imagine instead what happens, if it works? Because it might be a powerful motivation for doing our best to make it work, no? If for a moment we imagined Gaza as it actually was, not a long time ago – have you ever seen some photos of the 1950s? When in summer, we had tourists from everywhere?

And Gaza had plenty of cafés, shops. Palm trees. I’ve seen those photos. Yes.

But today as well… Have you seen how brilliant our youths are? Despite it all. How talented, how inventive, dynamic they are? With old fax machines, old computers, a group of twenty-somethings assembled a 3D printer: to produce the medical equipment that is barred from entry. That’s Gaza. We are not only destitution. Barefoot children. We can be like Singapore. Like Dubai. And let’s make time work for us. Heal our wounds. I have been in jail for 25 years. Basem [Sinwar points at one of his advisers, Ed.] lost a son, killed in a raid. Your translator: he lost two brothers. The man who served us tea: his wife died from an infection, no big deal, a cut: but there were no antibiotics. And that’s how she died. For something any pharmacist could treat. Do you think it’s easy, for us? Forgetting, all of a sudden? But let’s start with this ceasefire. Let’s give our kids the life we have never had. And they will be better than us. Now emotions are still too intense. Memories. Traumas. Resentments. We all need to restore our mental clarity, here. Take a breath: and restore our mental clarity. Everybody. Not only us. And in twenty, thirty years, those who will live here will probably see it all under a different light.

You are giving up?

I’ve been struggling all my life to get a normal life. I’m not surrendering; I’m persisting.

And during this ceasefire, Hamas would keep its weapons? Or you would accept, I don’t know, an international protection, like the blue helmets?

Like Srebrenica?

I guess it’s a no.

You guess right.

But so, sorry if I stick at it: but should this ceasefire not work? Not to jinx, but you know, the past is not really encouraging. So far, hardliners have knocked out any deal attempt.

If we will be attacked, we will defend ourselves. That’s it. I think we are both able to understand if an incident comes from extremists or not. But if we will be attacked, that’s obvious, we will defend ourselves. As always. And we will have a new war. But then, in a year, you will be here again. And again I will be here to say: war achieves nothing.

You have an iconic weapon: rockets. Quite makeshift rockets, actually, which are usually stopped by the Iron Dome. And to which Israel replies with its much more powerful missiles. Thousands Palestinians have been killed. Have rockets been useful?

Let’s be clear: armed resistance is our right, under international law. But we don’t have only rockets. At all. We have a variety of means of resistance. Such a question, honestly, is more for you than for me: it’s a question for all you journalists. We hit the headlines only with blood. And not only here. No blood, no news. But the problem is not our resistance: the problem is their occupation. With no occupation, we wouldn’t have rockets. Nor stones, molotov cocktails. Drones. Airstrikes. Nothing. We would all have a normal life.

But do you think they have fulfilled their purpose?

And the occupation? What was its purpose? Raising killers? Have you watched the video where a soldier shoots at us as if we were bowling pins? And he laughs, laughs. They were people like Freud, Einstein. Kafka. Experts of maths, of philosophy. Now of drones. What a pity.

You have now a new iconic weapon: arson kites. They are driving Israel crazy. Because they elude the Iron Dome. And nor they can be shot down one by one.

Kites are not a weapon. At most, they set on fire some stubble. An extinguisher, and it’s over. They are not a weapon, they are a message. Because they are just twine and paper, and an oil-soaked rug: while each battery of the Iron Dome costs 100 million dollars. Those kites say: you are immensely more powerful. But you will never win. Really. Never.

West Bank Palestinians face the same occupation, and yet they opted for quite a different strategy. Appealing to the UN. To the international community.

And that’s crucial. All is crucial. All means of resistance. But, if I may say so, sorry: when it comes to Gaza, the international community is rather part of the problem. When we won the elections, the reaction was an embargo. Immediately. If it turned out the way it did, it is also your fault. And now, too. You warn Hamas: We’ll deal with you only if there is also Fatah. Then you warn Fatah: We’ll deal with you only if there isn’t Hamas. The rift we have been so criticised for is also an effect of the embargo. And I understand Ramallah: with a national unity government, they might not get a penny anymore. They might go bankrupt. Even though we won free and fair elections. And to think that you razed Iraq to the ground to teach us democracy.

The embargo is because Hamas is viewed as an antisystemic movement. As an uncostitutional movement, so to say. That doesn’t abide to the rules of the game.

Which game? The occupation?

You know… Oslo. The two-state solution.

But Oslo is over. I think it’s the only point everyone agrees upon, here. But really everyone. It was simply an excuse to distract the world with endless negotiations, and meanwhile, build settlements everywhere: and physically erase any feasibility of a Palestinian state. And by the way, why do you all insist always and only with Oslo? We have signed so many other documents since then. Like the Prisoners’ Document [that in 2006 marked the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, outlining a unified strategy: it recognizes the 1967 borders, Ed.]. Why should we comply with something no one is complying with anymore?

Anyway, the staunchest opponent of this ceasefire seems to be not Israel, which is now focused on Iran: but Fatah. Which fears it might be a Hamas success.

A success? This ceasefire is not for Hamas or Fatah: it is for Gaza. And then, look. For me, what matters is that you finally realize that Hamas is here. That it exists. That there is no peace without Hamas, there is no possible deal whatsoever, because we are part and parcel of this society: should we even represent only 5 percent of Palestinians. But we are a piece of Palestine. More than that: we are a piece of the history of the entire Arab world. Like the secular nationalism Fatah comes from, or the communist Left. Like anybody else. But having said that: please, let’s avoid the word success. Because it’s outrageous for all the terminally ill patients that right now are queuing on the border waiting for it to open. For all the fathers that tonight won’t dare to look at their kids: because they won’t have any meal. But what success we are talking about? I have been in jail for 25 years. 25 years that I will never get back.

You went in jail when you were 27. And when you got out, you were 50. How was readjusting to life? To the world?

When I entered, it was 1989. We had still the Berlin Wall. And here, the Intifada: and to spread the latest news, we printed fliers. I came out, and I found internet. But to be honest, I never came out. I have only changed prison. And the old one was much better than this one. I had water, electricity. I had so many books. Gaza is much tougher.

What have you learned from prison?

A lot. Prison builds you. Especially if you are Palestinian: because you live amid checkpoints, walls, restrictions of all kinds, and only in prison you finally meet other Palestinians, and you have time for talking, for thinking. Thinking about yourself, too. About what you believe in, the price you are willing to pay. But it’s like if now I ask you: what have you learned from war? You would say: A lot. You would say: War builds you. But for sure you would like not to have ever been in war. I have learned a lot, yes. But I don’t wish prison to anybody. But really anybody. Not even to those who today, across that barbed wire, knock us down like bowling pins and laugh: and don’t realize that they might end up for 25 years in the Hague.

You were released in the Gilad Shalit swap. And Hamas has currently two Israelis, plus the remains of two soldiers killed during the last war. In a ceasefire deal, I guess the prisoner swap for you would be an essential clause.

More than essential. A must. It isn’t a political issue: for me it is a moral issue. Because probably your readers believe that if you are in jail, you are a terrorist, or somehow an outlaw. A cars thief. No. Here we all get arrested, sooner or later. But literally. All of us. Take a look at Military Order 101. Without an army authorization, it’s a crime even just to wave a flag, or be in more than ten in a room drinking tea and chatting of politics. Perhaps you are just chatting of Trump: but you can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Somehow, it’s a rite of passage, it’s our coming of age: our Bar Mitzvah. Because if there is something we are united by, something that really makes us all equal, all Palestinians, is prison. And for me it is a moral obligation: I will try more than my best to free those who are still inside.

In some way, you achieved more through kidnappings than through rockets.

Which kidnappings?

Like Gilad Shalit’s.

Gilad Shalit wasn’t a hostage: was a war prisoner. You see why we rarely speak with journalists? A soldier gets killed, and you publish a photo where he is on the beach: and your readers think that we shot him in Tel Aviv. No. That guy wasn’t killed while wearing Bermuda shorts and carrying a surfboard, but while wearing a uniform, and carrying a M16, and firing on us.

And with the ceasefire?

With the ceasefire no one will fire on us, right? And so no one will be captured.

You were talking of prison and Bar Mitzvah. Of coming of age. This year Hamas turns 30. How did you change?

How did you see all this, thirty years ago?

Thirty years ago I was 8.

And that’s it: we changed as you changed. As everybody changed. It was 1988: and we still had the Soviet Union. Basically, we were much more ideological than today. Our world was quite black and white. Friends and enemies. Now it’s no more like that: now we know that there are friends, and enemies, also where you don’t expect. And then, of course, taking power made us definitely much more pragmatic. Like whoever is in power. What didn’t change is our attention for society. Our care for society. Which is somehow the trademark of the Muslim Brotherhood. To do your part, you don’t need to be minister of Welfare: you set up soup kitchens, schools. Day hospitals. If you are Hamas, you are a citizen, before being a voter. But besides that, we are deeply focused on daily life. Daily challenges. I don’t wake up and think of Zionism. I wake up, and like everybody else, I think of water. Of electricity. I think that it’s time for this siege to end.

Many Europeans, yet, think of Hamas, and don’t think of charities. They think of the Second Intifada. Of suicide attacks. For Israelis you are a terrorist.

And that’s what they are for me.

A perfect start, for the ceasefire.

And what should I say? We hit civilians? They hit civilians. They suffered? We suffered. Tell me about any of their dead: and I will tell you of one of our dead. Of ten of our dead. And so? That’s why you are here? You are here to talk of dead, or to avoid new dead? But most of all, you: you think you are innocent? Only because you are Italian? And neither Arab, nor Jewish? How easy it is for you to come from far away, and feel wise and fair. We all have blood on our hands. You, too. Where were you, in these 11 years of siege? And in these 50 years of occupation? Where were you?

For your children, instead, what kind of life you hope for?

I hope they will be free to be Palestinians, of course. But not only that. Because I don’t want all their life to be influenced by the occupation. Physically, but also mentally influenced. Here we talk of the occupation all the time. Of demonstrations, checkpoints, settlements. Permits. Of clashes and negotiations. It soaks up all our energy. It seizes all our thoughts. And I want my children to dream of becoming doctors not to treat the wounded, but cancer. Like all the children of the world. I want them to be Palestinians, so that they can be much more than Palestinians.

Should you sum up all this in a sentence… All what you said. In one sentence only. What’s the message you would like readers to remember the most?

It’s time for change.

Listen… Just a last thing. I noticed that you have carefully avoided the word: Israel. As you can imagine, most of my readers would like to hear it from you.

Have you heard the word Palestine, on the other side?

What do you do? You go back to the first step logic? You said it’s a mistake.

How many questions… Have you any question left for the Likud?

I have many questions for the Likud. Yes. But now I am here. And I am here with you.

Netanyahu belongs to the Likud. And the Likud doesn’t recognize Palestine.

Ok, but…

Or Rabbi Yosef. Do you want to talk of Rabbi Yosef? Who wanted us all dead?

Ok, but… Just a minute. But so: if you heard the word Palestine, you would say the word Israel? I mean, the two words are not mutually exclusive?

Look. You were here in June. Together with hundreds of other journalists. And your reportage was the toughest one, with us. And you are also translated into Hebrew. And yet you are here. Again. Because you deeply respect us: and we deeply respect you. Sometimes, somehow, the messenger is also the message. You will leave now, and write it all. Will you be read? Will you be listened to? I don’t know. But we have done our step.