If you had the opportunity to start a new Middle East state from scratch, would you rather it be at peace with Israel or at war with Israel?

I genuinely wish regional leaders would ask themselves this question once in a while. And the fall of the house of Assad is a great time to do so.

Israel’s offer of peace has been on the table to all comers from the start. If you want peace with the Jewish state, you can have it. Should you take the offer?

If the citizens of your state are of any concern to you, it’s pretty obvious you should take the deal.

Israel borders Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. In recent weeks and months, we have watched Lebanon continue its long history of abridged sovereignty and political decay. The Iranian/Hezbollah statelet in South Lebanon persists, though in a weakened state. That occupation exists to regularly plunge the country into war with Israel. Before the area was Hezbollah’s playground, it was the mini-state of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which instigated two types of armed conflict: war with Israel and civil war within Lebanon. After Israel ousted the PLO from southern Lebanon in 1982, Syria intervened to ensure there would be no peace with Israel by killing Lebanese politicians who wanted an end to the bloodshed.

Syria, meanwhile, has been in the news because a decade-long revolt finally succeeded in ousting Bashar al-Assad, who has only been able to stay in power with the help of Hezbollah terrorists, Iranian generals, and chemical weapons that Assad’s forces used on civilians. Three-quarters of a century into Israel’s existence, such is the reality of life in the neighboring countries that insist on permanent hostility to Israel’s existence.

It is no coincidence that this is not the state of affairs in Jordan or Egypt. Peace with Israel isn’t the only reason for their relative stability. But not being at war with a first-rate military and ally of the Western democracies is a pretty big factor.

What might a Sliding Doors-style alternate history look like? We have a useful model in the Sinai Peninsula.

Israel took control of the Sinai during the Six-Day War in 1967. Egypt attacked again six years later but the Sinai stayed in Israeli hands. US-mediated negotiations resulted in interim and then final peace deals between the two, with the territory going back to Egypt and part of it established as a demilitarized buffer zone.

What did this desert war zone look like on the eve of the full reversion back to Egyptian control? Here’s a dispatch from the spring of 1982:

“The areas already under Egyptian control are humming with activity. Roads are being leveled, water pumping stations and electric grids erected, and hundreds of miles of pipelines are being laid across the desert.

“El Arish, the capital of the northern Sinai governorate, is a boom town. New houses are going up on nearly every street, and new suburbs are being added to the east and west of town. Hotels and holiday cabins are springing up on the beachfront amid the stately rows of palm trees.

“In El Tur, the capital of the southern governorate, Egyptian contractors are creating an entire town of gleaming white stone, complete with housing, shops, schools, cafes, and cinemas, to replace the cluster of rundown mud and plaster houses that formed the old settlement.”

While the Sinai was in its hands, Israel spent billions on energy projects and public infrastructure. It established agricultural villages and resorts.

You may also remember what happened when Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and left behind similarly beneficial infrastructure like high-tech greenhouses, a ready-made source of jobs and economic production. Palestinians looted them as the Palestinian Authority immediately lost control of its new territory and Hamas gangs sowed chaos throughout the strip.

That wasn’t the case in Egypt in 1982 and beyond. The result was not destruction but construction—roads, irrigation pipelines, power lines. Jobs had to be created for the residents so they didn’t sneak back into Israel for work. People moved to these Sinai towns because they believed the peace deal was for real.

One reason Egyptians were right to have confidence in the peace agreement: the fact that Egypt was investing so much in building on what Israel had started. Had Cairo expected to be going back to war soon, it would not have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into it as soon as the last Israelis picked up and left. And Israel, of course, had never sought war in the first place. No one seemed interested in wasting Egypt’s new peace dividend.

The residents knew what to demand of their leaders, as well. The region’s Bedouins, for example, spoke of the health and education resources provided by Israel during the years of occupation.

Could South Lebanon similarly prosper? There’s only one way to find out. And hopefully one day its residents will.