Why the Middle East?

I have always been drawn to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Islam, Islam, the political and religious movements in the Middle East ... The varied minorities greatly enrich the region. When I finished my career, I started working with a Palestinian news agency, and after living there, I realized that that conflict could not be analyzed in isolation, that I needed a more comprehensive view. So I started moving as a freelance to other countries. The one waiting for you has nothing to do. No one will offer you a salary of one month and corresponded with a translator or camera. Moreover, the figure of the reporter is disappearing.

Are conflicts in the Middle East or the Middle East news?

Conflicts sell more than peace or calmness. Journalist Xavier Aldekoa is not in vain saying that the figure of the war correspondent is already widespread, but that there are no peace journalists. In the news there is also a market, we all know what it sells and what it does not. I know that if some media were set to write from some places, they won't answer me, but as soon as I know I'm going to cover the last hour or a war, I'll have them on top. That's why it's hard to give up Breaking News. You can't bite the hand that gives you food. The key is to seek balance. If I've worked a lot on Breaking News, it's always time for me to go to other sites to write reports, although I know I'll lose money. We often show molotophs, stones, bombs, missiles -- but when the storm calms down, what is the day-to-day life of those countries? Although it's much more interesting and enriching to me, there's no interest in telling it. This distances us from reality, but the crisis has made the difference between what is necessary and what is important ...
Have journalists become puppets of the system?

When we come to the same place all of a sudden to a hundred journalists, it's hard to think of anything else. It's normal that you want to tell the next morning what you've bombarded at night, but sometimes it seems like you're taking us. We are too influential for each other. We are all moving the BBC, Al Jazeera and certain journalists. The political agendas of the media set the pace. Who decided that last July's news was going to be Gaza and not Syria? More civilians died in Syria than in Gaza. It is true that journalists are getting into Gaza more easily than in Syria, but there is an interest there, which is Afghanistan.
Interests, what's the role of a journalist like you?
Before, I believed more in the pedagogical function. Now I don't know if it's up to us to do pedagogy. We are there to denounce what is happening to us, what we have seen. Ours are the eyes of those who cannot be there. I'd like my mother or Mondragon's crew to understand through my chronicles what's going on, to make me angry as I've become angry with me. We are there to raise awareness. So I'm afraid that people don't understand what I'm counting. Regarding the need to count the last hour, we often do not have space to keep track of the thread and contextualize it. So in a video, I'd rather try to reflect reality through a person's experience. People stay with that, not with the last minute death toll.

Between black and white, how are we between empathy and lack of empathy?

Empathy is essential for the journalist. In Gaza, I come home and I've cried a lot. However, international journalists, and the West in general, are convinced that it cannot happen to us when we empathize with injustice. Alas, poor, it is unacceptable, but it will not happen to us!” Massacres and violence seem to us distant things, we belong to a land that is safe forever. But last year the Syrian refugees in Lampedusa also said the same thing to us: “We believed that what was happening in Palestine to us could not happen to us, that we were safe in Damascus, that we lived well.” They had just arrived with four children on a skateboard, with nothing. That's why I say that real empathy is achieved by putting it into the skin of an equal, and that's why you have to believe that it can also happen to you. When you get it, you put on chicken skin.

Black and white conflicts always appear. Where is the gray?

Many times, we're not going to look for stories, we're going to look for those who tell us this or that. The easiest thing is to tell the story you've had before. But the journalism that I think is opening the eyes of your head and making known what people want to tell you. When we go down to simplifications equal to our prejudices, we become dangerous. If we want simple stories that people can understand, what's the easiest thing? Two-sided exposition. But local realities are much more complex, in Palestine not all of them are Hamas or Fatah. What about Mahmoud Abbas? There is a special leader in the international arena, but no one in Palestine believes in his speech. The same is true of the friendship treaties between Hamas and Fatah. We, from the West, call ourselves “joy on the streets of Gaza,” but we get to talk to people and no one believes. The reality is far from the news and images coming from the agencies.

Why do we strive to look at the East from the Western goggles?

To understand the Middle East, you have to live with them, know their daily lives, own their social and cultural codes, and above all, be willing to be led by prejudice and learn from scratch. However, it is very difficult to avoid our filters. It has helped me a lot to work with local journalists. They live what is happening, have a rigorous knowledge of the situation and of society, know at all times how to act and how to walk... For example, it is essential for a journalist to know how to address people. Shortly after I arrived, I had to interview a very Islamist man, and when I held his hand, he went back and denied it. Luckily, he didn't take it wrong, but it was my mistake: I had to know that I can't give a handshake to a person like that. In this sense, I find it difficult to get closer to men. With women, everything is easier. Women in the Middle East seem to me to be very strong, they are the paradigm of dignity. They're really the ones who drive the family. The role they have in society is much more active than we think. They seem to me to be more feminist than many of the women we see here as feminists. Getting out of the house, taking the metro, shopping, going to work -- it's a daily struggle with dignity.

In day-to-day struggles, what are journalists, what are they trapped or what weapon are to be used?

A hindrance to some and a weapon that needs to be exploited for others. In Palestine, and in most Middle Eastern countries in general, people are opening the doors of their homes, telling you their reality without rebounds. The Palestinians know that they have to resort to international journalists to address Israel’s deeply entrenched agenda and discourse. Many times we find them desperate, convinced that counting serves no purpose, but we can't start selling smoke. We cannot change anything, we do not come to help anyone, but to tell the reality. On the other hand, in some places, the work of a journalist is very well controlled. When I was last in Gaza, both Israel and Hamas were controlling us. In the Middle East, however, bureaucratic obstacles are greater than political obstacles. For example, in Egypt, after the coup d'état, the situation has become very complicated for journalists. You can't take almost no camera out in the street, if you see notes in a notebook stop you, the bureaucracy to get the press card can last six months and if you get caught without the press card you can have problems. The accounts vary greatly according to the country and the time, and it is important to know what the rules of the game are each time.

While we were talking about Egypt, what has remained of that Arab spring?

Nothing. What's more, we shouldn't call it the "Arab Spring." We are in the middle of winter, the return of military regimes and the explosions of civil wars are the main protagonists. Even Tunisia is the small island that is saved, but the old foxes of Ben Ali are also back. We've been very naive. It was a great mistake to think that this was a revolution that was only in the hands of the citizens. We believed that there was no other interest, that the power of citizenship would dismantle the whole system. Look now ... Something similar happens with the role that social media played in the revolution. It's true that they were an important tool, but the entrepreneurs who were in it had been out, those who knew English, those in the West. They didn't represent a hundred percent of the crowd. In Egypt, not everyone has access to the internet.

Will the conflict between Israel and Palestine ever be resolved?

I'm very skeptical. The journalist Eugenio García Gascón says that this is a conflict that can be resolved in two minutes with a totally isolated Israel. But is there the will to do so? Today, when the Israelis sit at the table, they know that they have nothing to lose, that they are not going to talk about the substance of the matter and therefore do not care about anything. I am convinced that the situation is getting worse every year. What is the purpose that this can have? What we hear is that Gaza could remain in the hands of Egypt, that the conquest of the West Bank would not stop, that it would leave the Palestinians in the West Bank in area A, and everything else would be in the hands of Israel. Thus, demographic pressure would force the Palestinians to move to Jordan and other countries, while the Palestinians would lose ground. That is Israel’s ultimate goal and time is also on its side, it is not in a hurry, it is in no hurry.
When there are wars, will the myths of war journalists last?
Since I've been working, I've demystified the work of war journalists. It's true that if you go to war, you have to be careful, but I don't think the heroic treatment given to some journalists is fair. No one here is suicidal, we all take our steps. We too have to demystify our figure and say that we are going to do our work. We're there to tell what's going on, not to be protagonists. If you have a good network of contacts, everything is easier than you expect. That's why it's important to get out of the whirlwind of wars and go back to places. You don't have to go wherever there's fire. An investment can be visiting those who are outside the focus of today. You have to work the contact networks, be with people, take the pulse in your sight... You never know when and how you're going to come back, and if you don't have an up-to-date picture of reality, all your tests can be wrong. That, for example, is far from myth, but it's fundamental to our profession.

Is it a myth to be able to organize an agenda for an international freelance journalist?

I have no agenda. At most I can make plans in 15 days' time. I try to get a couple of reports out every week, and if I'm going to follow a more powerful, last-minute piece of news, I like to start with organized minimums. That gives me great freedom, because I consider it a privilege to be able to live from the work I've done, because I can decide where to go, but on the other hand, there are the links. It's beautiful to be able to go to a place you really like for a week, or take two weeks to do an intensive Arabic course, but the volatility work is so unstable that it's hard to maintain an emotional balance at all times. However, I would like to go on like this for a few years, because I know that in the future I will not return to my current life. I know that as a person, as a woman and as a journalist, they're going to change my priorities. I know I don't want to walk like that all my life, but for the moment I'm happy.