All around us the Middle East is going through changes that were quite unimaginable even two weeks ago. Who could have forecast that the dictatorship in Tunisia would be removed, that effectively Hizbollah would take over the government of Lebanon, that King Abdullah of Jordan would fire his entire government by way of attempting to head off civil unrest, and that Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year rule in Egypt would be hanging by a thread as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators march onto the streets of Cairo and other major Egyptian cities to demand a change to his repressive regime?

The speed with which events have overtaken us is simply breathtaking, and nobody really knows quite where it will all lead. Will the region suddenly embrace democracy, or will attempts at establishing democratic values sadly lead to power vacuums that result in Islamic militants filling the void in the way that Hizbollah has in Lebanon, one of the very few countries around here that attempted to live along generally democratic lines, but now finds itself in the appalling position of being nothing more than a doormat for Syrian and Iranian ambitions in the region.

One point that must be stated in relation to all these changes is that they are not connected to Israel or the Middle East peace process. These are instances of downtrodden people finally taking courage and attempting to follow the lead given them by former Soviet and eastern bloc countries like East Germany, Rumania, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States, where people-power proved too strong a force for even the most iron-fisted of despotic regimes.

And what is it that the fast-growing populations in these Arab lands actually want? Well, whether they would like to hear it or not, they actually want to be like Israel. They want to be free, democratic nations.

Regular followers of this blog will know that not everything that happens in the Jewish homeland is to my taste and there are a number of things that I vehemently oppose, yet that is the beauty of Israel. You can oppose. You can speak out. You can demonstrate. You can be right-wing, left-wing, pro-settlements, anti-settlements, you have freedom of speech, and probably more than any other place on the planet that freedom is tested to the very limits here in Israel.

You have rights too. Jews, Arabs and Christian are treated equally under Israeli law, a legal system and judiciary which (as I pointed out only recent with the conviction of former president Moshe Katsav) is truly independent, something that cannot be imagined in the Arab world. In Israel, women’s rights, children’s rights, and gay rights are considerably more progressive than many western democracies.

These freedoms are Israel’s greatest gifts to her people, but there are those that argue that in giving everybody such a strong voice you end up with too many cooks spoiling the broth (so to speak), and fudged parliamentary processes that only ever take one step forward and two steps back. That however is the price that we have to pay for being a genuine democracy, albeit one whose rules and guidelines could do with adjusting (such as the present PR voting system), to enable Israel to progress further.

The question is, are the people of the Arab world ready, or more pointedly capable of truly embracing such seismic changes to their lives? Could Arab democracy really function effectively, or would it simply be an invitation for extremists to rush into the void and take the region down with them?

If you were to walk out onto the streets of Cairo today and suggest to those Egyptians risking their lives to demonstrate against Mubarak, that what they are really marching for and laying down their lives to achieve is to be like Israel, I suspect you would receive rather short shrift.

16 years ago I was travelling in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, and met a group of university students in the capital city of Jakarta, who on discovering I was English were very keen to talk to me and practice their language skills. They were secular Muslim men in their mid-20’s, very well educated, impeccably mannered and thoroughly charming. They asked lots of questions about Britain and Europe, and I then asked who in the world they most admired? Bearing in mind this was 1995, the answer that stunned me was – Saddam Hussein!

Why Saddam Hussein? Well, as they told it, it was because he was the only man that had the guts to stand up to Israel and America, and Muslims across the globe should salute him. When I pointed out that Hussein had removed virtually all democratic processes, allegedly murdered tens of thousands of his own people and brought the Middle East to the brink of even nuclear war, they said it didn’t matter. It was better to have him than have the Zionist devils in Israel. It was a shame his scuds hadn’t removed Israel from the region.

That was 16 years ago, before Al Qaeda, before radical Islam, 9/11 and more, and these were decent, upstanding Indonesian young men who despite a very good education had doubtless been indoctrinated since birth to believe that Israel is the root of all evil in the world. There will be many like them in Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and other Arab states, so how much should Israel rely on peaceful transitions to democracy and respect for their Jewish neighbour?

I suspect that whilst the growing number of countries in the region demanding political change unwittingly want to be just like us, sadly they are not ready to embrace the responsibilities that democracy brings with it.