Three weeks after proposing a conditional pardon, it now appears that a more effective and responsible framework is emerging from the President’s Residence.

Three weeks ago, I published an article in the Times of Israel arguing that a conditional pardon could help stabilize Israel’s political–legal crisis and begin healing its deep social divide. Today, a more refined idea is emerging – a graduated pardon framework – one that offers a clearer constitutional path, preserves legal responsibility, and provides Israel with a realistic way out of its spiraling conflict.

The debate around the prime minister’s request for a pardon is not merely a legal dispute; it is a struggle over the character of the state. At its core lies a nearly existential question: must the legal process be carried out at any cost, even when it has become one of the deepest fault lines in Israeli society, and when more years of testimony and political warfare will bring no healing?

Opponents of delaying the proceedings often speak from genuine concern for democracy, but their position rests on a form of moral absolutism – the belief that justice is an unconditional duty, independent of context, and that no step in the process may be paused even if its continuation threatens the state’s stability. This stance echoes a simplified, and ultimately misleading, reading of Kant: a belief that the law must be executed even if society collapses around it.

But this interpretation misunderstands Kant entirely. He never suggested that a legal process should continue when doing so destroys the conditions that make law meaningful. His idea of moral duty presupposes a functioning........

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