Last spring, the 200th anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death brought much reflection on his legacy, but little was said about his lasting impact on the Middle East. Even in the Arab world itself, the debate about his significance—which is not so different from that within Europe—has faded somewhat. But without a doubt, the three years that the French emperor spent conquering Egypt and launching attacks into Ottoman Palestine changed the region forever. Stephane Cohen writes:

Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt was marked by key events like the battle of the Pyramids, but Napoleon’s forces also battled in Jaffa and Acre, and fought and defeated superior Ottoman forces in the Galilee, in battles near Mount Tabor (near Nazareth) and on the Jordan River. Napoleon’s campaign in the Galilee in the spring of 1799 led to clear French victories, and yet, Acre continued to resist the French siege and assaults. On May 17, 1799, after the defenders had received help from the British and the eighth attack on Acre’s walls by French forces proved inconclusive, Napoleon realized he couldn’t succeed. With his army suffering from disease, Napoleon decided to lift the siege on Acre and return to Egypt with a demoralized army.

Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt and Syria are recognized as the beginning of the modern period in Middle Eastern history. . . . Napoleon’s occupation did not modernize Egyptian society, [but] created a political vacuum in Egypt. Following the French withdrawal, Mohammad Ali Pasha soon filled the vacuum and began laying the foundations for modern Egypt that later would play such an essential role in the history of the Middle East. Furthermore, it led Britain to secure dominions to protect its Indian possessions against any possible attacks by land. Catalyzed by Napoleon’s campaign, the “awakening” movement—known as the Nahda (or “renaissance”), an Arab cultural and intellectual movement—flourished in many parts of the Middle East throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, with Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut, and Tunis, as its focal points.

Contributing to the Jewish state’s current controversy over efforts to reform its judicial system, observes Peter Berkowitz, is its lack of a written constitution. Berkowitz encourages Israelis to seek a way out of the present crisis by looking to the founding document they do have: the Declaration of Independence.

The document does not explicitly mention “democracy.” But it commits Israel to democratic institutions not only by insisting on the equality of rights for all citizens and the establishment of representative government but also by stressing that Arab inhabitants would enjoy “full and equal citizenship.”

The Israeli Declaration of Independence no more provides a constitution for Israel than does the U.S. Declaration of Independence furnish a constitution for America. Both documents, however, announced a universal standard. In 1859, as civil war loomed, Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter, “All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

Something similar could be said about Ben Gurion’s . . . affirmation that Israel would be based on, ensure, and guarantee basic rights and fundamental freedoms because they are inseparable from our humanity.

Perhaps reconsideration of the precious inheritance enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence could assist both sides in assuaging the rage roiling the country. Bold and conciliatory, the nation’s founding document promises not merely a Jewish state, or a free state, or a democratic state, but that Israel will combine and reconcile its diverse elements to form a Jewish and free and democratic state.