DJ: But do you really think that Hamas actually cares about the Palestinian people? Aren't they part of something different, a jihadist global movement, for whom the Palestinians are merely a pawn on the chessboard? With Hamas it is impossible, surely, to negotiate?

ABY: I always consider myself as a left-wing person, but what is the difference between Left and Right? The difference is that the Left believes in human beings' capacity to change, while the Right thinks about destiny, mentality, repetition. Both sides are right but still I am on the side saying: we will change. What happened in Gaza was a blow to our optimism. If you wanted to have real slaughter with such ammunition, with air raids, we could have killed 20,000 or 30,000. What was done by the British and Americans in Fallujah? Maybe 6,000 were killed there, and the insurgents there didn't fire on Washington and London. Yes, you can say, "The attack on Gaza was brutal," and there were many people in Israel who were a little shocked by this brutality. And I know the brutality happened because the Israeli Army was afraid after the failure in the second war of Lebanon in 2006, when we really demonstrated our weakness - we could not conquer a village in the south of Lebanon with all of the army and all of the tanks. And the Israelis were afraid in Gaza because of the warning to all of us: if you enter Gaza you will be hated by Hamas. There will be suicide terrorists, you will see that this will be a disaster. I remember a debate with my friend Amos Oz, who said: "This will be a disaster for us, we will not be able to pull out, there will be hundreds of Israeli soldiers killed."

So we were afraid, and that was why the shooting was so intensive: in order to save the lives of Israeli soldiers, and especially to hit the places from which Hamas were involving civilians. Because for Hamas, the killing of the civilians is a benefit. They want to paralyse Israel with the shooting of civilians. I remember how cruel the PLO were and how extreme they were for so many years and how difficult it was with them. And they have changed. So I believe that Hamas can change too.

HJ: Amos Oz said something similar. We actually feel differently away from the Middle East - it's so different being there. Away from Israel, I think Jews are probably more alarmist. We can't be certain how well you can protect yourselves. We can't be certain what it is that you feel confident that you can do, because we need your confidence. At one and the same time, we want to feel that you believe you are impregnable, because we want you to be impregnable. But on the other hand we don't want you to be haughtily or cruelly impregnable. And we think, my God, the next stage is going to be Iran, and then where are we?