On Sunday, an important question will be put to the test in France, one that concerns us no less: How will the French fear of foreigners and the "others" - which Nicolas Sarkozy has strongly underscored on his way to the head of the race - be translated at the voting booth, and will these anxieties redefine the face of the republic? And there is a hidden but deep link between the rise of the resolute French candidate and the embarrassment of a marginal Israeli political figure, Azmi Bishara, the product of Jewish and Arab fears here.

This connection transcends many countries. It lies beneath the rising global fear of the Islamic threat. This fear is fed by the American talk of the "axis of evil" and Iran's unruly behavior. It rages to a surprising extent in Europe as well as countries in Asia and Africa, with its belligerent Islam from Algeria to Darfur.

In a rapidly changing world, in which mass immigration has turned into a giant uncontrollable flow, this fear forces France and Israel both to reexamine the most basic principles of the two republics.

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Sarkozy is currently leading in a campaign in which the treatment of minorities may end up being the deciding factor. MK Dr. Azmi Bishara, a world-renowned intellectual and an Arab nationalist, is trying in vain to explain his opinion on this in Israel.

The French Republic has, since the revolution, been based on a principle of unconditional equality for all who wish to assimilate in it. Now Sarkozy is demanding a new identity test for those who seek French citizenship. The Israeli majority is also terrified of the concept of a state of all its citizens. Its government has done everything possible in order to avoid naturalizing non-Jewish immigrants. It has always withheld true equality from its Arab citizens. It is rejecting a Sarkozy-style test and is even refusing to apply it to non-Jewish youth who have sworn allegiance to the state and to the IDF on Masada. At times like Holocaust Remembrance Day, these politics are intensified into a neurosis. Israel has become one of the pioneers of modern Western nations' fear of foreigners and minorities.

France has joined this fear. Sarkozy is riding the wave, as if he is toeing the line of Israeli anxieties. As interior minister, he vigorously suppressed the 2005 riots by African and Arab youth in Paris' suburbs, and there are those who are concerned that if he is elected France will get an authority-rich president who will treat immigrants brutally, perhaps to the point of setting off a civil war. It is likely that the philosopher and media star Bernard-Henri Levy, a Jew who is sensitive to the status of minorities, and who announced after long consideration his support for Segolene Royal, did so in no small part because of this concern.

Bishara wants more than equal rights. In his eyes, Arabs cannot be true partners to the Israeli experience. And in order to live alongside the state's Jews, he is seeking a sort of autonomy, what is termed consensus democracy, or advocating a binational state. But this political philosopher does not reflect the desires of most Israeli Arabs. Bishara is playing into the hands of Jewish-Israeli nationalism. Yet proper national politics should not to be swept up by what Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin recently whispered in the prime minister's ears. Israeli Arabs are not a "strategic threat." The threat is seeing them as such and refusing - due to Jewish anxieties that sometimes border on hysteria - to allow them to integrate into the Israeli fabric, and be put to the fair test of a state of all its citizens.

Sarkozy represents an Israeli-type fear. But here the fear becomes dangerously extreme. If that fear continues to guide us, it will in the future meet more and more partners to Bishara's desperate opinions.