Forgiveness and Reconciliation: The Religious Dimension

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on “forgiveness” as one of the most conspicuous expressions of the growing role of religion in conflict transformation. The main questions put forward are the following: What is the role of forgiveness in reconciliation? Is forgiveness a necessary condition for reconciliation between former enemies? Is it sufficient for bringing about real and stable peace between them? To what extent and how does religion affect the reconciliation via forgiveness process?

This paper distinguishes between material conflicts, which evolve around material and dividable assets, and identity conflicts, which involve deep-seated hatred originating in the feeling of at least one of the sides that the other has usurped their legitimate rights. While material conflicts can be brought to an end through traditional conflict resolution techniques, identity conflicts need “track two” diplomacy strategies, and particularly forgiveness in order to reach reconciliation. Forgiveness, basically a religious concept, is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for bringing about reconciliation in identity conflicts. To the extent that the sides to the conflict share similar religious convictions regarding the centrality and nature of forgiveness, religion will contribute to reconciliation. But if the contenders hold different (let alone conflicting) tenets regarding forgiveness, religion may hamper the reconciliation process.

A quick glance at the three monotheistic religions shows significant differences in their approaches toward forgiveness. While Judaism, and to some extent Islam, see repentance as a sine qua non for forgiveness, Christianity highlights mercy and love and teaches its believers to ask and grant forgiveness without preconditions. These differences may widen the gap between the parties to an identity conflict that wish to resolve their conflict and ultimately reach full and genuine reconciliation. The arguments put forward in this paper need to be put to the test in historic and actual cases of identity conflicts. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict could serve as a suitable example for such a test.

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Notes

R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 7.

For example, see Mohhammed Abu Nimer, “Conflict Resolution, Culture and Religion: Toward a Training Model of Interreligious Peacebuilding,” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 6 (2001): 685–704; M. Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); M. Gopin, Holy War, Holy Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

E.g., the mega-terror events in the United States—September 11—and Spain—March 11, 2004—and the many terror acts in the Middle East.

Vladmir Handle, “Czech-German Declaration on Reconciliation,” German Politics 6, no. 2 (1997): 150–67.

Joseph V. Montville, “The Healing Function in Political Conflict,” in Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice, ed. D. J. Sandole and H. van der Merve (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 122–23.

Louis Kriesberg, “Coexistence and Reconciliation of Communal Conflicts,” in Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, ed. E. Weiner (New York: Continuum, 1998), 186.

Donald W. Shriver, “Forgiveness: A Bridge Across Abysses of Revenge,” in Forgiveness and Reconciliation, ed. R. G. Helmick, S. J. Petersen, and R. L. Petersen (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2002), 163.

Dezmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (New York: Norton, 2000), xvi.

On the need for “track two” (non-official) diplomacy to compensate for the shortcomings of the regular “track one” diplomacy, see John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington DC: Institute of Peace Press, 1997); Joseph V. Montville, The Arrow and the Olive Branch: A Case for Track Two Diplomacy; The Psychodynamics of International Relations (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990).

Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49.

Appleby, Ambivalence, 7.

Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon, 63.

Jonathan Fox, “Religion and State Failure: An Examination of the Extent and Magnitude of Religious Conflict from 1950 to 1996,” International Political Science Review 25, no. 1 (2004): 58.

Joseph V. Montville, “Religion and Peacemaking,” in Forgiveness and Reconciliation, ed. R. G. Helmick, S. J. Petersen, and R. L. Petersen (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2002), 101.

Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (Jerusalem: Edanim Publishers, in collaboration with Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing House Yediot Aharonot Edition, 1976), 512.

For a description of Israel-Egypt relations vis-à-vis the “stable peace” and “reconciliation” concepts see Y. Bar Siman-Tov, “Israel-Egypt: Stable Peace?” in Stable Peace among Nations, ed. Arie M. Kacowicz et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 220–38; William J. Long and Peter Brecke, War and Reconciliation: Reason and Emotion in Conflict Resolution (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).

On the role of “victim” ethos and narratives in sustaining intractable conflicts in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, see Daniel Bar-Tal, “Societal Beliefs in Times of Intractable Conflict: The Israeli Case,” International Journal of Conflict Management 9 (1998): 22–50.

For example, Kenneth E. Boulding, Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1962); L. A. Coser, “The Termination of Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 5 (1961): 347–53; Ronald J. Fisher, International Conflict and Behavioral Science (New York: Basic Books, 1964); Kalevi J. Holsti, “Resolving International Conflicts: A Taxonomy of Behavior and Some Figures on Procedures,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (1966): 272–96; and Evan Luard, The International Regulation of Frontier Disputes (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970).

Louis Kriesberg, International Conflict Resolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 9.

Daniel Bar-Tal, “From Intractable Conflict through Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation: Psychological Analysis,” Political Psychology 21, no. 2 (2000): 354.

For example, Lily Gardner-Feldman, “The Principle and Practice of ‘Reconciliation’ in German Foreign Policy: Relations with France, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic,” International Affairs 75 (1999): 333–56; Louis Kriesberg, Constructive Conflicts (Lanham, MD: “Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Montville, “Healing Function,” 112–27; Robert L. Rothstein “Fragile Peace and Its Aftermath,” in After the Peace: Resistance and Reconciliation, ed. Robert L. Rothstein (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 223–47.

For example, John W. Burton, Conflict and Communication (London: Macmillan, 1969); J. W. Burton, “Conflict Resolution as a Function of Human Needs,” in The Power of Human Needs in World Society, ed. Roger A. Coate and Jerel A. Rosati (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988), 187–204; Ronald J. Fisher, “Methods of Third Parties Intervention,” in The Berghof Handbook of Conflict Transformation, ed. Norbert Ropers, Martina Fischer, and E. Manton (Berlin: Berghof Center for Conflict Management, 2001), 1–27; Herbert C. Kelman, “An Interactional Approach to Conflict Resolution and Its Application to Israeli-Palestinian Relations,” International Interactions, 6, no. 2 (1979): 99–122; Herbert C. Kelman, “Social-Psychological Dimensions of International Conflict,” in Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques, ed. J. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 191–237.

For an updated summary of the social-psychological approach to conflict resolution, see Herbert C. Kelman and Ronald J. Fisher, “Conflict Analysis and Reconciliation,” in Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology.

Ervin Staub and Daniel Bar-Tal, “Genocide Mass Killing and Intractable Conflict,” in Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, 732 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Rothstein, “Fragile Peace,” 237.

Kriesberg, Constructive Conflicts, 351.

Ibid., 352.

Ibid., 354.

Alexander L. George, “Foreword,” in Stable Peace among Nations, ed. Arie M. Kacowicz et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), xiii.

E.g., the peaceful, but far from friendly, relations between Israel and Egypt following the 1979 peace agreement and improved, but not really reconciled, relations between the United Kingdom and Argentina following the signing of a series of bilateral agreements in 1990.

E.g., Sadat's visit to Israel in November of 1977 and Menem's benevolent visit to England in 1998.

Appleby, Ambivalence, 194.

Ibid., 195–96.

Jeffrie G. Murphy and J. Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 15.

Donald W. Shriver, “Is There Forgiveness in Politics? Germany, Vietnam and America,” in Exploring Forgiveness, ed. R. D. Enright and J. North (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 133.

Nicholas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 17.

Ibid., 100.

Ibid., 102.

Jean Hampton, “Forgiveness, Resentment and Hatred,” in Forgiveness and Mercy, ed. Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 35–87.

Montville, “Healing Function,” 120.

Joram Graf Haber, Forgiveness (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991), 83.

Ibid., 103.

Tutu, No Future, 271–72.

Ibid., 281–82.

Long and Brecke, War and Reconciliation, 111.

Lily Gardner-Feldman, “Practice of ‘Reconciliation,’ú” 335.

Julie Juola Exline and Roy F. Baumeister, “Expressing Forgiveness and Repentance: Benefits and Barriers,” in Forgiveness: Theory, Research and Practice, ed. Michael E. McCullough, Kenneth I. Pargament, and Carl E. Thorsen (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 147. For further discussion of obstacles on the way to forgiveness in the international arena see Yehudith Auerbach, “The Role of Forgiveness in Reconciliation,” in From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, ed. Y. Bar Siman-Tov (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 149–75.

John P. Lederach, “Beyond Violence: Building Sustainable Peace,” in Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, ed. Eugene Weiner (New York: Continuum, 1998), 236–45; Ervin Staub, “Genocide and Mass Killing: Origins, Prevention, Healing and Reconciliation,” Political Psychology 21 (2000): 367–82.

Gardner-Feldman, “Practice of ‘Reconciliation,’” 333–56.

Lily Gardner-Feldman, The Special Relationship between West Germany and Israel (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984).

For the detailed story of the Reparation Agreement and its impact on Israel-Germany relations see Yehudith Auerbach, “Foreign Policy Decisions and Changing Attitudes” (Doctoral dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1980), Yehudith Auerbach, “Ben-Gurion and Reparations from Germany,” in David Ben-Gurion: Politics and Leadership in Israel, ed. Ronald W. Zweig (London: Frank Cass, 1991), 274–92.

Shriver, “Forgiveness in Politics,” 134.

Deut. 28:9.

Elmer, William, John Smitt, “Sin and Forgiveness in the Old Testament” (doctoral dissertation, Drew Theological Seminary, 1943), 230, 376.

Solomon Schimmel, Wounds Not Healed by Time: The Power of Repentance and Forgiveness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 57.

Tutu, No Future. For an excellent review of the literature regarding both the Christian and Islamic approaches to forgiveness, see the appendix to Dan Bar-On, “When Are We Expecting Parties to Reconcile or to Refuse to Do It? The Specific Triangle of Jews, Germans, and Palestinians” (paper presented at the Workshop on Reconciliation, Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, Jerusalem, February 2001).

Schimmel, Wounds Not Healed, 64.

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchoth Teshuvah, 2, 9–10.

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchoth Teshuvah, 1, 1.

Schimmel, Wounds Not Healed, 30.

Rabbi Avraham Y. Hakohen Kook, Orot Hateshuvah [The Lights of Repentance], (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1994); Pinchas H. Peli, On Repentance: From the Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Jerusalem Education Department of the World Zionist Organization, 1974).

“The Encyclopedia of Islam,” EI ², New ed. Vol 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 385.

“The Encyclopedia of Islam,” EI ², New ed. Vol 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 1078.

George E. Irani, “Islamic Mediation Techniques for Middle East Conflicts,” http://www.biu.ac.il/soc/besa/meria/journal/1999/issue2/Jv3n2a1.html

2 Samuel 19:23.

For elaboration of this point see Schimmel, Wounds Not Healed, 83–85.

Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower (New York: Schocken, 1998).

Theodore M. Hesburgh, in Ibid., 169.

Deut, 25:17–19.

For elaboration of that point see Auerbach, “Role of Forgiveness.”

Gardner-Feldman, “Practice of ‘Reconciliation.’ú”

Tutu, No Future, 31–32.

Gopin (note 2) 190.

For example, Shriver, “A Bridge,” and Tutu, No Future.

Like Appleby, Ambivalence, and Gopin (note 2).

Like Fox, “Religion and State Failure.”