The endless conflict between Israel and Palestine has been part of the national dialogue for quite some time. However, the media attention over Chuck Hagel’s nomination has revived the media coverage of the conflict. This piece is about the question of forgiveness, and how it can enter the Israel/Palestine dialogue. While there are many complicated issues at stake, both ideological and practical, I am pursuing a particular element of the problem: forgiveness

For Israel and Palestine, much of what happens is a matter of revenge. The rational is “they are attacking us and we have to attack them.”  As a result, we see an ongoing repetition of vicious violence on both sides. Israel frequently says it has the right to exist as a Zionist Jewish state. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir claims the nation “exists as the accomplishment of a promise made by God Himself.”

The “God-given” right of Israel to exist — which the Israeli state often then cites as, in part, its justification for building more colonies in Palestine — leads many in Israel to take any criticism of their state policies against Palestine as evidence of anti-Semitism, citing victimhood, the specter of the Holocaust and the history of persecution to censor critique of their own state policies. By calling itself a victim, Israel is making it clear that it, and only it, has the power to forgive.

The question turns to whom it is Israel is meant to forgive. Palestine never “hurt” Israel in a way that Israel could forgive. So the forgiveness would have to be directed at the Nazis, and other historical actors in the persecution of Jews. Palestine didn’t “do” anything to the Jews per se (in the history of Jewish persecution, except for the biblical conflicts between them). Thus, it seems more that Israel claims its victimhood from past violence waged against its people — the Holocaust, for example — and then raises the specter of that violence whenever it gets criticized for its own violence — which it claims as self-defense. So perhaps Israel has to forgive these other offenders.

But Israel refuses to grant this forgiveness to those offenders and, in the meantime, continues to pursue policies that essentially undermine Palestinians’ rights when Palestine has never really done anything against Israel in the first place. For example, Palestinians do not even have a Palestinian State passport, but something called a “Palestinian Authority passport,” which is meaningless in practice. Since the U.N. recognition of Palestine, there have been some changes afoot, but they are developing very slowly.

Due to the settlement policies of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are displaced and thousands have died as a result. Israel may claim that some of these policies are necessary for its own stability , but how is it stable policy to be stuck in such an endless struggle? I refuse to accept the realpolitik position that this is just how politics works and there is nothing that can be done to change such a seemingly hopeless situation.

However, if Israel forgives its offenders and discontinues the false rhetoric, the implications would be radical. Of course, Israel is not the only one that needs to forgive. But in many ways it has the power to forgive because it is a state. Arguably Palestine also needs to forgive — for illegal seizures of land, the 1967 war and continued settlements that currently displace millions. But the demand for Palestine to forgive is much less, since it is not a state in the commonly held conception of the geopolitical landscape, which makes it powerless.

In his essay “On Forgiveness,” the French philosopher Jacques Derrida explores the paradox of granting forgiveness: true forgiveness consists of forgiving the unforgivable. From this supposition, a certain relationship between unconditional forgiveness and ethical politics is asserted: what does such forgiveness both demand (impossibly) and make possible (or at least thinkable) for any future polity? The “impossibility” challenges us to think in new ways that are unexpected and possibly revolutionary. Such ethics of forgiveness must enter the political realm to break the hopeless cycle of cruelty.

As philosopher and activist Judith Butler might say, this is especially true now, since, with globalization, our precariousness is to a large extent dependent upon our organization of economic and social relationships, which reveal the fragile and necessary dimensions of interdependency. Our interdependency also reveals a furthered sense of moral obligation to co-habit and co-exist with one another, and thus, a moral obligation to re-think our future polity.

Thus, if Israel were to grant forgiveness, this would become a kind of shock that would radically alter the norm — a vicious cycle of violence. But even in the act of granting forgiveness, Israel might imply a legitimate claim to power to do so. According to Derrida, this type of power makes forgiveness a wretched concept — he argues that pure forgiveness is absent from such a power and sovereignty. This may seem like a maddening, irrational and wholly impractical concept in the sphere of politics, but perhaps sense and rationality are what keep us in these vicious cycles in the first place.

The rationality of Israel and Palestine is “they are attacking us and we have to attack them.” There has to be something that breaks this mentality. What is that going to be? With greater privilege, there is greater responsibility. Granting forgiveness would be a noble act, and I call on Israel to react to this ethical demand.

Edward Radzivilovskiy is deputy opinion editor. Email him at [email protected].