Mr. Sharansky's political understanding has the economy and clarity of a few mathematical axioms. There are regimes where the leaders depend on their people. There are regimes where the people depend on their leaders. In the former case, democracy, the leader must care for the people's well-being in order to survive. In the latter case, tyranny, the leader has to keep his people under control in order to survive, because no one likes to be controlled.
History shows there are two ways to control the people.
One can mobilize them to hate an internal enemy, or mobilize them to hate an external one. There will be no peace in the Middle East as long as Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. There are no wars between democracies, only between tyrannies and democracies, and tyrannies and tyrannies. But there can be peace, where the people enjoy freedom, and are reluctant to go to war. During November, the Israeli government published a white paper documenting hundreds of Palestinian violations of existing accords, and yet proceeded to offer escalating concessions that seemed to increase Palestinian calls for holy war.