This week I’ll be leaving for the Middle East to take a first-hand look at Palestinian and Iraqi elections.

President Bush has made the promotion of Mideast democracy the rhetorical centerpiece of his foreign policy. So it’s important to assess whether these elections will advance the development of an ostensible democracy among Palestinians (who have no state) or a democratic Iraq.

The answers are far from clear.

Both publics are clearly eager to vote. Palestinian polls show that around 75 percent of voters will turn out to choose a successor to the late president Yasser Arafat, even though the front-runner, Mahmoud Abbas, has no real competition.

In Iraq, despite the terrible security situation in much of the country, 71 percent say they strongly intend to vote, according to a poll by the U.S.-based International Republican Institute (IRI).

It will be fascinating to ask what the act of voting actually means to ordinary Palestinians and to the people of Iraq. In both cases, the vote clearly is about more than choosing new leaders.

Will Palestinians demonstrate, by turning out in force, that they support the call by Abbas to end the violent Palestinian uprising, and to push for statehood by nonviolent means? Do Palestinians assume that the balloting will lead to renewed peace talks about a Palestinian state?

Will they sour on Abbas when they find that no such talks are in the offing? And can a democratic entity be built in the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians control only disconnected cantons of land?

In Iraq, the meaning of the vote is even more complex. The IRI poll shows that the act of voting has totally different meanings to Iraqis depending on whether they are Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims or non-Arab Kurds. This is something I want to explore further.

Shiite Iraqis, the majority community, who have been repressed for decades by Sunnis, are eager to vote because the ballot represents their ticket to power. Their clerics are issuing religious fatwas ordering them to the polls. Kurds, who dream of independence, will vote but are less enthusiastic.

Many Sunnis, who see the vote as certain confirmation that they have lost power, are boycotting, or are intimidating other Sunnis who would like to vote.

So in Iraq, I will be trying to find out whether the country can hold together, or whether this election is the precursor to civil war. I want to look at whether it is still possible for the United States to train Iraqis to fight for one Iraq when different communities have such conflicting visions of Iraq’s future.

I also want to look at when or whether each of these Iraqi communities wants U.S. troops to leave.

But the biggest question I want to explore is whether these elections mark a turning point in the region. Again, the verdict is unclear.

Many Palestinians appear weary after four fruitless years of a violent uprising, and ready for a leader who can improve their daily lives. So elections might shift the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle back toward peaceful talks. But this won’t happen if Israel continues to build new settlements on the West Bank, even as it withdraws from Gaza.

So it will be fascinating to talk with Israelis, including settlers, about how “they view the meaning of Palestinian elections.

As for the Iraqi ballot, it’s doubtful it will turn the country around. It is essential to give the majority of Iraqis the right to choose their leaders. But the election isn’t likely to stop the violence that threatens to tear Iraq apart.

I want to talk to Shiite leaders about whether they intend to reach out to moderate Sunnis after the voting. Iraq will achieve peace only if its different communities can reach a new consensus about sharing power — one in which the Shiites extend a hand but the Sunnis understand their days of minority rule are over.

But that consensus can’t occur while Sunni insurgents continue to assassinate government leaders and newly trained security forces at will. So far, U.S. forces haven’t figured out how to crack the insurgency or train Iraqis to do so.

The most important question in Iraq is how security can be restored. I want to ask the likely new Iraqi leaders whether they have fresh ideas on how to motivate Iraqi troops. That, more than the outcome of these elections, may determine whether Iraq is heading toward better times.