Interview with Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa
Translated from the original Italian transcript
Interviewer: Your Eminence, allow me to begin with the title of Pope Leo's encyclical, Magnifica Umanitas. What strikes me most, more than anything else, about the war you have witnessed is the inability of the parties involved to recognize each other's humanity — and not just in a moment of fury. In public communication itself, there has been insistence, in particular, on legitimizing that especially fierce type of reprisal that followed October 7th on the Israeli side, presenting this war — I quote the former Defense Minister verbatim — against "human animals." I should add, for the sake of completeness, that similar epithets are used on the Palestinian side as well, even directed at other Palestinians — I am referring to the [Palestinian] National Authority and Hamas. How is it possible to reach this point of degradation?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: The facts show that it is possible, unfortunately. And — [clearing throat] — I believe it is true that what happened on October 7th was a deep trauma that is still very present within the Israeli soul, the Israeli Jewish soul. But it is also true that we come from years of very violent and very exclusionary language and narrative, and so, after October 7th, with the Gaza war, one might say that the last restraints fell away — restraints that had perhaps held things back until then. But it is a combination of things. One cannot generalize; it is certainly not the whole Israeli population that is like this. But it is also true that there has been, and still is, a deep trauma within the Israeli population, a sense of rejection of what happened, but there is also a narrative, a way of thinking that little by little was underestimated — I used to think, "they are extremists, they are exaggerated," and so on, that they don't count. Instead, little by little, that language has become — I won't say dominant, but in any case very present.
Interviewer: Your Eminence, you come from Gaza — I believe you have been there four times recently, since October 7th; we spoke about this a little this morning — but can you tell us what Gaza is, or what it is not, today?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Gaza. I have looked with great curiosity at the map of Gaza. I have travelled across the whole of it several times — before the war and also during the war. The last time was a week ago, exactly a week ago today. I went in — the last time I entered was from Kerem Shalom. Usually I enter from the north, so this time I had the chance to cross it from south to north. It is a disaster, it must be said. There are entire towns that no longer exist — literally levelled to the ground. Rafah is one of them: Rafah no longer exists, it does not exist; there used to be hundreds of thousands of people there. When you go in, two different things strike you, but what strikes me most, first of all, is that you have to walk, you have to travel along makeshift tracks in the middle of the tents. There are hardly any buildings left standing; here and there a few whole buildings remain, but almost all are either destroyed or damaged. People live in tents literally in the middle of sewage. The other thing that images cannot convey is the smell. And there is something that is spoken about little: one of the most present plagues at the moment is rats, which bite people — especially children. People live in tents, so amid all this there is also a very degraded sanitary situation, as you can imagine. And it is horrible to see dozens of kilometres — I don't know how many — all like that, all like that, where now a little food is getting in, mostly for commercial purposes, but everything else is still forbidden. Anything that could be considered dual-use — anything Hamas might use — is forbidden, even, I say from experience, when we wanted to reopen a school: school desks, exercise books, pencils — all of this is forbidden. So we said, let's take wood from pallets and make desks out of that — but then you need nails, so there are a great many people who go through the rubble to salvage a bit of metal, nails, these things, to fix them up a little and then resell them. To give you an idea of how far things go: many medicines are also missing — not everything, not everything, but certain medicines are lacking, hospitals badly need them — glass for windows and things of that kind. I was in an ophthalmic hospital that had been half destroyed, of course; they had to patch things up a bit — the wards and so on — with a bit of plastic in place of windows and things like that. They try to find whatever way they can to recover what can be recovered, and I must say — it is a great sorrow, something I find hard — perhaps too diplomatic a way to put it — I don't know, I honestly cannot understand it.
Interviewer: Your Eminence, as we all know, there is a visible Gaza and an invisible Gaza — that of the famous, infamous tunnels, where Hamas's men have entrenched themselves, and where I imagine quite a few of them still are. What is the relationship between these two Gazas?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Well, the relationship exists. Hamas still controls most of the Gaza Strip, I mean, in both senses. Hamas is a galaxy of organizations, of groups — it is not one group, it is a well-organized network, now certainly also weakened, but it still holds control. Moving around Gaza — the last time a little less so, but on previous occasions, at the road crossings there were always people with weapons, and they belonged to Hamas. Even today, wherever I went there was always someone — very courteous, very respectful — but there was always someone who, let's say, checked, accompanied, things of this kind. When you go into the Strip, a message always arrives, a call saying "welcome" — to show, let's say, that control is still quite evident. It is clear that the so-called headquarters are still there, and there is still a great deal underground. An anecdote: we had several schools in Gaza before the war; one of them was the Sisters of the Rosary school. I went to see a neighbourhood that had been completely razed to the ground, and I wanted to see what remained of the school — in the Rimal area — and it was striking to see the school largely destroyed, but there was one school building where a block had partly collapsed, caved in — you could see that underneath there were probably tunnels. When the tunnel was blown up, the school block collapsed — to show that the tunnels are indeed there.
Interviewer: Your Eminence, the local population that remains — I don't know how it is estimated today, out of an original roughly 2 million, 200,000 [sic], how many remain? It would be interesting to know, though I don't suppose this is the moment for a census. How have the local population, and children in particular, adapted to this reality — to some extent?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: [sighs] Yes and no. It is very difficult to get used to this situation. Let's say children remain children. What strikes you, first of all, is seeing so many children — so many, everywhere — living in the street, dirty, playing amid the sewage because there is nothing else, instead of being at school. So very few schools still manage to function. The vast majority of the schools that exist are organized by volunteers or by organizations, but they are not officially recognized, and the buildings too are either destroyed or used as shelters by the population — those that are not yet destroyed. But speaking with the teachers who are there — they spoke of our own [institutions] — but also speaking with healthcare workers, everywhere I went, I thought: we need to organize ourselves to bring in medical supplies, doctors too, for surgery, etc. They said, yes, certainly that is needed, but above all we need trained people to deal with children's trauma, the psychological support of children and of mothers.
Interviewer: We at Limes also published an exchange of letters between Israeli psychoanalysts and psychoanalysts from Gaza, precisely on this theme — on sharing the pain.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: And going there — it's a difficult subject, it seems very difficult — yes, but in the end it will be necessary.
Interviewer: Absolutely. But the Israeli soldiers in all of this — the ones you meet in Gaza or elsewhere — what kind of dialogue is there between you?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Well, there is a bit of everything, there is a bit of everything. There are — I must say, with sorrow — I am, in theory, supposed to be a religious man, I am a bit religious, let's say — the toughest ones are the religious ones.
Interviewer: That is what surprises me a little — religious soldiers.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Religious soldiers, yes. And there is a bit of everything. Is there anything resembling chaplains in this context? No, no, no — these are religious combatants. Combatants, yes. There are also chaplains, but that is a different thing. These are combatants themselves, and they are the toughest. There is a bit of everything. There are even members of my own diocese who do military service. During the war I had soldiers from my diocese in Gaza who were shooting, and others who were under their fire — to give you an idea, there's a bit of everything. And the last time I went in, a soldier stopped me at the crossing and wanted a photo. Well — I had to be careful, because if it gets published you never know how it will look. And he said to me: "I thank you, because you make the world a better place, but then there are others who do exactly the opposite, who shoot," and so on. There's a bit of everything. It's difficult to say, but in general I must say that it is very hard to have a free, calm, clear relationship. It too is a galaxy, but it is a moment in which clear points of reference are lacking, even in this context.
Interviewer: Let us change geography, and then we will conclude with Jerusalem — let us move to the hills of the West Bank, or of Judea and Samaria, as that territory is called in Israel with biblical memory. We have seen that during the Gaza war, and still now, the so-called Jewish settlers have been pushing ever deeper and acquiring, with military support, tracts of territory, helped and encouraged by the government. I imagine you have had occasion to meet some of them. I was reading one of your interviews in Limes, I believe from 2010, in which you described two kinds of spitting — being spat on your cassock, and being spat on the ground — to indicate, let's say, the degree of sympathy you could enjoy in certain circles. So what is happening in the West Bank among the settlers — a kind of free-for-all, I don't know how to put it?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: It has become a territory where there is no law — and if there is, certainly not for the Palestinians — and where the settlers are permitted not everything, perhaps, but almost everything. Yes — gratuitous aggression, theft, destruction; they cut down trees or stop you from going to farm your own land, continually, daily, every day; new checkpoints that won't let you through; and the attacks — I repeat — are sometimes very violent, with people injured, and also with words of contempt, which are often what wound people most. This has become daily bread almost everywhere across the West Bank — not only in Christian villages, I would say above all in non-Christian villages — and there is no address to turn to, we don't know who to go to. And it isn't only Area C — they also enter Area B, they enter Area A, and then they go back. There are situations — they even have their own coordination among themselves — they come in, they attack, and we call the army, but when they know the army is coming, apparently they are tipped off, they disappear; the army arrives, finds no one, and gets angry with us for having called them. This happens daily, and people are truly very tired, and the Israeli-Palestinian question is being decided there. Perhaps it has already been decided, I don't know — perhaps so. But after October 7th, after the first weeks in which emotion over the massacre suffered by Israeli civilians and soldiers prevailed, we found ourselves focused — not by our own choice — on what became Israel's reprisal. Sometimes I have the impression this has had a kind of sanctifying effect on the Palestinians, as if there were simply good and evil. We know the matter is somewhat more complicated. In particular, speaking of the West Bank, this famous National Authority, entrenched in its offices in Ramallah, which a couple of years ago celebrated the Nakba with a fashion show in a luxury hotel — what is it? What does it represent?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: I must tell the truth, what I actually think — what else can I do, they'll tear me apart anyway, one more or one less makes no difference by now. Well, let's say the Palestinian Authority has lost credibility, first of all in the eyes of the Palestinians themselves, and it is anything but an authority. It has lost authority and standing, and it has certainly made a great many mistakes — the political errors have been very numerous indeed. Certainly, it is still the only element still internationally recognized as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, so one must also be careful about condemning it — and there are many reasons to do so — out of respect for the Palestinian population, who have the right to be recognized as a people and who must be able to live in their own land with dignity. It is sad to see how it is represented, and how, in fact, it is not that.
Interviewer: And the relationship between the Palestinian population in general and Hamas in the West Bank — what is it like?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: There is a bit of everything. Let's say that what has been seen in Gaza has frightened part of the Palestinian population somewhat, but not everyone. There is a part that says: Abu Mazen, with dialogue, has lost everything; the only way to deal with these people — meaning the Israelis, as they put it — is to use the same language they use. So even if there will be losses, it is still the only way to bring about a different policy for the future. So we are there, always in a very fluid situation — there is fear of ending up like Gaza, but there is also exhaustion from living that way. And perhaps what prevails above all is the drama of not having clear points of reference to rely on, that inspire confidence. It is also true, of course, that Israel has always sought to prevent there being an interlocutor. It is sometimes forgotten that until midnight on October 7th, Hamas was, in some ways, in very close relations with Israel — it was being financed. Before the war, Hamas was dominant in the territories, its support dipped somewhat, then rose again — it's also very hard to know exactly, because one has to see how reliable these surveys are — but let's say it is a solid presence in the territory.
Interviewer: Speaking of the ultra-religious Jewish figures, in particular the most extreme currents — Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and company — with their reference to the Bible, as though by divine mandate they had a right, broadly speaking, to the territory stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates — is this, in your view, something that corresponds to a widespread, deep-rooted sentiment, or are these, let's say, rather particular fringe figures?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: They are not yet a majority, but they do have a growing following. It is a messianic movement, let's say, an inner-Israeli political messianism, and they do not represent the majority of Israel, but they are becoming — indeed already are — some of them are quite prominent ministers, and they enjoy ever greater participation and credibility within Israel. It is, from my point of view, a very problematic phenomenon, one that is also creating a deep division within Israeli society itself.
Interviewer: Yes — readers of Limes know how we keep insisting, not because we say so, but because Israelis themselves say so, on the Israeli tribes and on the profound divisions among them. Looking ahead to 2050, demographers indicate that by then roughly 30% of the population will be Haredi — ultra-Orthodox — who, by self-definition, do not recognize the State of Israel, do not take part in its defence, and live a separate life studying the Torah in their own schools. Add to that 30% around 21% who are Arab and other minorities, so probably by 2050 Zionist Jews would be a minority — not because some alternative idea like two states or a binational state had taken hold, but because [large parts of the population] want something very different, or want nothing at all.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Yes — 2050 is close, it isn't far off at all, and I believe there is an awareness of this within the Israeli population too, in the cultural world as well as the political and, let's say, military one. And this is perhaps one of the elements creating a sense of insecurity within the Israeli population — feeling surrounded by Arab countries and also undermined from within. And all of this creates this feeling of being encircled, which often — more often, perhaps, than we think — also shapes the choices that are made, choices of a political and also military character.
Interviewer: Your Eminence, Jerusalem. You have lived in Jerusalem for I don't know how many years now.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Thirty-six.
Interviewer: So you are more a Jerusalemite than anything else — the privilege of this view from the centre of the world, we might call it, if nothing else, from the centre of the world of the Abrahamic religions. What is Jerusalem today, and how is it changing compared with three years ago?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: It has changed, it is changing a great deal, and also very quickly. The demographics are changing, the boundaries are changing — to stick with internal boundaries, psychological more than physical ones, of course, along with property, with the way things work, the passages and so on. With the settlements — East Jerusalem, the sacred basin itself, is by now surrounded by Israeli settlements. The latest is [name unclear in source].
Interviewer: And where do you live?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: I live in the Old City, in the heart of the so-called sacred basin, not far from the Holy Sepulchre — the area, let's say, with the highest concentration of holy sites in the world. Until fairly recently it was a predominantly Arab area; that is no longer the case. There is constant change, and it used to be very rare to see Jews, even religious Jews, passing through our streets, because they are all narrow little alleys. This is now normal — it has become increasingly normal, which is not a problem in itself, of course — but it shows how the way the city is experienced is also changing for everyone, and it is one of the reasons there are also more clashes, more frictions between Christians and Jews — that is also due to this, the fact that people encounter one another more often than before, and so the attacks on Christians that have been discussed are linked to this too.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: The demographics are changing: the Arab population is not growing as it once did, Christians are fewer and fewer, while the Jewish population is growing much more, especially the religious and religious-nationalist segment. I was struck — though perhaps this is due to misinformation — by how little solidarity the Israeli Arab population has shown toward Gazans since October 7th, since the Israeli reprisals. We are, by now, living enclosed in separate bubbles, increasingly separate from one another. And in these recent years, Arab Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, has taken little part in the political developments in the West Bank and in Gaza. There have certainly been demonstrations, but very lukewarm ones, very lukewarm. There is also very tight control — for example, during difficult periods, only people aged 47 and above could go to the mosques, not young people. And entry into Jerusalem has also become more difficult, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem — Jerusalemite Arab Muslims and Jerusalemite Christians — have preferred to keep, let's say, the status quo of Jerusalem firmly in place, not out of a lack of solidarity, but above all to protect what little remains of Jerusalem's character, because everyone is aware that the heart of everything is there.
Interviewer: Perhaps it is not widely known that most Zionists are not Jewish but Christian — in particular American evangelicals, who are a real power, as we know. The American ambassador Huckabee is one of the most vociferous supporters of the most extreme versions of Israeli expansion. There is also a portion of Catholics involved.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Yes. What does this — strange, or not so strange — connection between Zionism and Christianity, and even in part Catholicism, mean to you? It connects a little to what you were saying about political-nationalist Jewish messianism. I find that these evangelical movements have no dialogue with us. I believe we should perhaps begin to have one, especially about the way they interpret Scripture. They are very powerful — economically very powerful, very influential within — a bit less so now, they too are somewhat divided after the Gaza war, but they remain very influential in the United States, especially over the American administration, and they are, let's say, one of the principal concerns of the Arab Islamic population, of the Jordanian Royal Court, for instance. And they are also a problem for us, for us Catholics — not only Catholics, let's say, of the traditional churches, the Orthodox churches too and so on — because a large part of the Islamic world cannot tell evangelicals apart from other Christians. They think all Christians are the same, which creates problems for our communities too. And this alignment of the evangelical movements with part of the American administration, and also the Israeli administration, is, for us, a big question mark — something of a gap we need to close. We have always refused to talk with them, precisely to avoid being seen as aligned with them, or in any way complicit.
Interviewer: And have they ever sought you out, I imagine?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Mm, perhaps someone has, recently, a little — but one has to be careful not to be used by them either, because a photo with them can become a real problem. So we have to find a way to manage that kind of contact, but certainly we must find a way to talk and try to understand — we spoke of understanding the other's pain, but one must also understand how the other thinks, and why they think that way, in order to try to see whether different paths can be found.
[applause]
Interviewer: To close, Your Eminence, sketch out for us, in your own words — perhaps we can map it afterward — your diocese.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: I have one of the most complicated dioceses in the world, perhaps the most complicated: it covers four different countries — Jordan, Israel, Palestine (Palestine meaning the West Bank and Gaza), and Cyprus, both parts of Cyprus, the Greek part and the Turkish-occupied part. The only country whose borders are settled is Jordan; all the other countries still have borders to be resolved — Cyprus as well as Israel and Palestine. And I have six vicariates. Six vicariates means — a vicariate is a pastoral region, let's say — Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Cyprus. I have one vicariate for foreign workers, something few people talk about: there are more than 100,000 foreign workers in Israel doing the jobs Palestinians used to do — Israel no longer wants Palestinians among them. Filipinos work as caregivers, Chinese and Thai workers work in construction and agriculture, and a large part of them are Catholic. And then I have the Hebrew-speaking Catholic vicariate — Catholics of Jewish, Hebrew-speaking expression, Israeli in every respect — with whom, recently, we have had a bit of tension. This is my diocese. No meeting in my diocese can be conducted in a single language. Mine is the Diocese of Jerusalem, where 90% of the population of my diocese cannot go to Jerusalem.
Interviewer: What languages do you use?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: What languages do we use? Well, it depends on the context: Arabic-English, Hebrew-English, always English, and then either Arabic-Hebrew or Greek-English.
Interviewer: I think we should map your diocese, with your help. Practically speaking, what can we do now, here?
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Well, Limes does a great deal — you talk about it, you inform people, because for such a complex reality, information is important — information that tries to help people understand, and then everyone draws their own conclusions; that is certainly important. I think it is also important for everyone to keep talking about it and not simply follow trends — the newspapers cover it for a while, then stop. Keep talking about it, and talk about it with genuine interest; you can disagree, you can like it or not like it, it doesn't matter, but don't stop talking about it, because I am convinced that this territory belongs to us — not politically, or else I will be misunderstood — I mean that we belong to that territory culturally, historically; it is part of us. Very often Islamic voices say, "Why don't you talk about the problems of South Sudan, and so on?" But our relationship with Sudan is not what we have with Jerusalem. Here, in this library, there is a whole room full of texts about Jerusalem Delivered, written in the 1500s — they did not write about South Sudan. So I believe talking about it is very important, and it is important to express something everyone needs — Palestinians, first of all, but Israelis too. We must not isolate — we must not isolate a country that already feels isolated, that would be wrong — but there is a need for empathy: empathy, and trying to understand, listening, engaging in dialogue — and dialogue does not necessarily mean agreeing, but affirming, even with conviction, one's own opinions, without building new barriers.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: You know, there is empathy around, but only for those who think as you do. If that is what you do, you are doing exactly what we are already doing ourselves — we don't need that. You must help us climb out of the well we have fallen into, not leave us down there.
[applause]
Interviewer: Your Eminence, what can I say — this applause confirms how right our choice was, for me, for all of us. Though, of course, I'm playing at home here.
Cardinal Pizzaballa: Well, all right, agreed.
Interviewer: And so I am truly very grateful to you for having accepted this award, which will now be presented to you in the appropriate ceremony.
