I am optimistic that peace can be achieved in the region because I believe that every society on earth can be free and that if freedom comes to the Middle East, there can be peace.

Only weeks after Oslo began, when nearly all the world and most of Israel was drunk with the idea of peace, I argued that a Palestinian society not constrained by democratic norms would be a fear society that would pose a grave threat to Israel.

If you have to fight an enemy at a critical point in time, and you have an ally who happens to be a dictator, you don't say: Let's stop fighting right now, because you're not a democrat. That would be ridiculous.

To understand why dictators have a problem with making peace - or at least a genuine peace - the link between the nature of a regime and its external behavior must be understood.

My theory is that security - also against terror - can only be accomplished through global democratization.

I was inspired to write this book by those who are sceptical of the power of freedom to change the world.

Just as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.