A wall at Netiv HaAsara facing the Gaza border reads the words “Path to Peace” in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Photograph by Cole Keister via Unsplash

None of us can know with certainty what approach Donald Trump will take to the genocide in Gaza or how Hamas and Israel will respond to him. What we can know, as difficult as it now is to conceive, is that war will end sometime, and then we will face the question of “what then?” Will — or can — there be peace in Israel/Palestine that lasts?

About a year ago, I focused on the lasting peace question as a thought exercise while I was undergoing a lengthy MRI, and when I exited the tunnel, I was discouraged because the only answer I had come up with was what seemed a limp phrase: mutual empathy — or, in Scriptural words — love. Even more discouraging, as I mulled over that question across the following weeks, I could come up with nothing stronger.

Short-term solutions? There are many, ranging from astute diplomacy to brutal oppression. In the longer term? After thinking seriously about this for many months, I no longer see the empathy phrase as limp. Bland as it might appear, nothing will work except empathy: a hard-nosed, clear-headed decision to take seriously the complaints and interests of the other, to be willing not just to acknowledge the other’s pain but to feel it.

A lifetime of trying to think “rationally” has me conditioned to see mutual empathy as heartwarming but naive. I am ready now to say, however, even to shout, that it offers the only hope for stable peace in the Middle East (or anywhere).

We desperately need a ceasefire now, followed by humanitarian assistance. Buildings and infrastructure in Gaza must be rebuilt, families reunited, institutions restored. But those measures will provide only a temporary end to fighting. Both Israelis and Palestinians have too many valid reasons to feel victimized for peace to hold without a transformation in the way each regards the other.

For Israelis, the stories of discrimination and exclusion go back to ancient times. For millennia, Jewish people have been driven out of homes, burned at the stake, imprisoned, gassed, spit upon, murdered — most often by Christians, for the simple reason of being Jewish. The Hamas massacre in 2023 was simply the most recent horror. Though aimed at the Israeli occupiers and not at Jews per se, those killed were nearly, if not all, Jewish.

Tales of evil treatment run just as far back for Palestinians. Genesis 34 relates a story of trickery by Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, followed by mass murder of all the inhabitants of the Promised Land — Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Deuteronomy 20:16-18). During the last three generations, a million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, either in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) or by illegal Jewish settlers and Israel’s occupation. They live without sovereignty, in what many call “an open-air prison.” Israel has killed more than 45,000 since October 7, 2023, with nearly 70 percent of the casualties being women and children.

Given that context, victimhood has become an important part of both people’s identities, so important that any cessation in fighting will be followed eventually by new fighting, unless something drastically different is tried.

That is where my MRI vision comes in. While neither side can be expected to forget its grievances, lasting change will remain impossible until everyone — Palestinians, Israelis, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Americans, Europeans — begins to listen seriously and respectfully, with heart as well as head, to both sides’ complaints.

Sages long have told us that a world worth inhabiting must be grounded in respect and love. Confucius warned against doing to others what we would not want done to ourselves. The Talmud interpreter Hillel asked, “If I am only for myself, then what am I?” Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, called on us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek. The apostle Paul said to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). Gandhi said his attitude, even toward the oppressing British, was “one of utter friendliness and respect”; his struggles were rooted “not in hatred, but in love.”[i]

No community can flourish, they were saying, unless people care about the wellbeing of others, enemies as well as friends.

Defense and security have been the focus of realpolitik discourse for centuries, justifying the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 in his final address to the nation. And where has that approach left us? Wars end, only to be followed by new wars mere decades later. Talk about naivete!

The only exceptions came in those few cases when nations replaced vengeance with programs designed to create mutual wholeness. The prosperous peace that followed World War II occurred after the victors decided to address the real needs and aspirations of Germans and Japanese whom they demonized during the war. In South Africa, only when Nelson Mandela encouraged his own people to create a country in which both Whites and Blacks prospered did a better system evolve. None of these countries reached perfection, but in each, the result was a dramatic, lasting improvement.

When I hear Palestinians focus solely on their victimization, saying nothing about Hamas’s role in bringing us to this stage, I worry about the future. When I hear Israelis talk about hostages and their own “right” to control the region, ignoring the oppressive structures they have built to suppress the people who inhabited that space for millennia, I have the same worries.

I agree with Palestinians who say the unspeakable harm experienced at the hands of Israeli colonial settlers gives them the right to choose how they should respond to injustice. I also agree with Israelis who say they have a right to security and freedom.

And I know that getting Palestinians and Israelis to begin taking the other’s complaints and goals as seriously as their own will be monstrously difficult. Any solution will seem “unfair” to many. It will be frightening. Leaders who advocate it will be unpopular; they will be called naive.

Without the courage to move to that point, however, the future will simply bring a repeat of today’s horrors.