Ariel Sharon’s unrestrained belligerency is certain to mean further attacks on Arabs. He says that Israel will strike “everywhere and in every place”; Israeli officials warn that Syria may be attacked again. None of this can be dismissed as bravado; the threat is real.

Rather than Syria, Lebanon is more likely to be the next victim. In the wake of the Syria attack, Hezbollah have been firing across the frontier and Israel has dispatched new forces to the area. Furthermore, the Israeli Army has called up two battalions of reservists, ostensibly for deployment in Gaza and the West Bank. But there are reports that more reservists will be called up in the next few days and sent north.

Will Sharon invade? That would be madness after the bloody but ultimately futile invasions of the past, but Sharon has never learned from Israel’s mistakes.

Yet what is the Arab response to this warmongering and aggression? Impotence is a strong word, but impotence is precisely what Arabs on the street feel. The Syrian ambassador in Madrid says that his country reserves the right to retaliate if Israel attacks it again, but few believe that it will, not because of Israel’s military muscle but because the Arabs are hopelessly divided. There is no Arab unity, no Arab will to stand up to the Israelis. So, instead, the Syrians are forced into the meaningless exercise of calling on the United Nations to condemn Israel — meaningless because the US will veto anything other than a toothless resolution which Israel will then ignore.

It is all too reminiscent of the young emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, appealing to the League of Nations in 1936 after Mussolini’s forces had invaded and occupied his country; everyone sympathized but no one lifted a finger to help.

The Arabs have to stand up for themselves. They have to stop expecting others to be their saviors. Other countries have their own agendas; they are always going to put their interests first. If we wait for the Americans or anyone else to bring peace to the Middle East, we will wait forever.

Time and time again, history teaches the lesson of unity. Nine centuries ago, it was Muslim disunity that allowed the Crusaders to capture Jerusalem and for almost two centuries remain where they did not belong. Only when Salahuddin united the Muslims were they defeated and expelled.

Today, without unity, there is no chance of forcing the Israelis into concessions. “Divide and rule” is the age-old expression, but it is not the US or the Israelis who have divided the Arab world; they merely take advantage of it. The wound is self-inflicted. It has to be self-healed.