Roughly 400 million Muslims currently live in non-Arab Muslim majority states – including Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, and Albania – that have held relatively free elections for their highest political offices. These countries may not yet be full democracies, but, because they hold competitive elections, they have met a necessary condition for being a democracy.

But since Lebanon was torn apart thirty years ago by civil war and violence, exacerbated by PLO, Israeli, Syrian, French, and US military incursions, not a single Muslim has lived in an electorally competitive Arab state. This is why it is so important for the world to think deeply about the current opportunities for democracy in Palestine and its neighbors.

Modern democracies share at least seven preconditions:

· a functioning state;

· a monopoly over the use of legitimate force;

· borders that have strong national and international recognition;

· agreement on who are its citizens;

· a government that rules from within the national territory;

· an elected government responsible to its citizens;

· a reasonably integrated legal system.

Obviously, when the PLO was headquartered in Jordan, Lebanon, or Tunisia, and there was not yet a Palestinian Authority, Palestine did not meet any of these seven prerequisites. Indeed, partly owing to Yasir Arafat’s own actions or inactions, at his death Palestine still had none of them.

For example, while Palestine’s state capacities were destroyed by Israel, especially following the second Intifada, Arafat made matters worse by constantly bypassing and eviscerating potential mechanisms of accountability, such as the elected Palestinian Legislative Council. He failed to do anything about Palestine’s legacy of four different and contradictory legal systems.

Moreover, Arafat contributed to the absence of a legitimate monopoly of force by ignoring the semi-autonomous armed actions of his own Fatah-based militia, as well as the Fatah-based Al–Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, not to mention other groups’ armed militias.

But let us imagine what was unimaginable even a few months ago: a world where the present diminution of conflict holds, and where discussions between Israel and Palestine arrive at a mutually acceptable recognition of each state’s sovereignty. To be sure, this is possible only if the United States pushes Israel much harder than it has so far to give Palestine viable borders. How might such a world affect prospects for peace and democracy in the Middle East?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas desperately wants to construct a functioning state. With cessation of Israeli incursions, and large-scale international aid from the European Union, the US, Japan, and some Arab League countries, he could begin to make a plausible go of it.

With an effective state, and an inclusive and functioning electoral system, Abbas could then disarm his own Fatah-based militia. With peace, and the prospect of doing well in July’s parliamentary election, in which it has agreed to participate, Hamas would have powerful incentives to transform itself from an armed movement outside the system into a political party committed to competing for power at the ballot box. By disarming any remaining militias, Abbas could claim what Max Weber called the necessary ingredient of any state, namely a “monopoly of the legitimate use of force.”

Palestine has more elements of a vigorous civil society than virtually any other country in the Arab world, including an active human rights movement, which initially focused only on Israeli abuses, but that has increasingly criticized violations by the Palestinian Authority itself. Palestine also has a powerful women’s movement (Palestine being the first Arab country to give women the vote, in 1946).

Finally, and ironically, because so many Palestinians have worked in Israel, spent time in Israeli prisons, often speak and read Hebrew, and are regularly exposed to the Israeli media and the rough and tumble of Israeli politics, Palestine has more young citizens than any other Arab country who have observed life in a democracy at first hand. So democracy in an independent Palestinian state is possible.

Lebanon has had regular elections since its civil war ended in 1990. But a country without sovereignty, or control over its domestic politics, does not have a democratically serviceable state.

Syria, bolstered by the 14,000 troops it stationed in Lebanon, has imposed its choice as Lebanon’s president and otherwise interfered with Lebanese politics. So Lebanon cannot be considered electorally competitive.

With a just and stable Israeli-Palestinian peace, Syria might be forced not only to withdraw its troops, but also to lessen its interference in Lebanese politics. Lebanon could return to the democratic track, and Hezbollah might use democratic, not military, politics as its survival strategy in the newly sovereign Lebanon, especially if an international peacekeeping force were consensually allowed to demilitarize the Golan Heights.

The only two Arab countries ever to recognize Israel were Egypt in 1978 and Jordan in 1994. But this was an asymmetrical peace. Both countries recognized Israel, but Israel did not recognize Palestine, and Israel’s construction of settlements on occupied land continued. In Jordan and Egypt, protests against the asymmetrical peace led to growing social fragmentation and processes of regime-led domestic de-liberalization.

A symmetrical peace between Israel and Palestine would, by contrast, incite much less Islamic resistance. A symmetrical peace agreement might also contribute to a new dynamic in Jordan and Egypt, namely re-liberalization of society.

Palestine and its immediate neighbors have their best opportunity in thirty years to produce democratic states. They can do so if they seize the current opening, and if the international community intensifies its support for an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.