But the oil factor changed everything. British support shifted to Abdul Aziz Al Saud, who completed the invasion of Hijaz after Najd and founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [that later came] under the auspices of America, which came to the area for oil.

To mobilize the Arabs against the remnants of Turkish domination, Great Britain promoted Arab leaders as the Ottomans’ successors. Sharif Hussein bin Ali (a Hashemite) used his Western and British support to declare the Great Arab Revolt and to call for the consolidation of the Arab countries, at least in the East, under his rule.

From the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) to the Balfour Declaration (1917), the colonial West redrew the map of the Arab Levant after the fall of the Ottoman Empire according to Western interests. The West created weak states that paved the way for the implantation of Israel in the Levant 30 years later (1947–1948).

On the eve of the centennial of the First World War (1914–1919), which resulted in the Levant’s division into nonviable statelets, the Arabs’ future is once again in danger.

The wave of popular uprisings that the West dubbed the Arab Spring did not reassure the Arabs about their future in their countries, which are now in the eye of the storm.

The British plan was carried out through an agreement with France and the two victors signed the Sykes-Picot treaty (1916), which divided up the Middle East. A year later, the British foreign minister delivered what came to be known as the Balfour Declaration. It was a promise to the leaders of the Zionist movement (1917) that a state for the Jews (Israel) would be established in Palestine.

As a consolation prize to Sharif Hussein, who died in British exile in Cyprus, the British temporarily made his son Faisal the king of Syria, after detaching the southern portion (Jordan) to establish a Hashemite emirate for his older son, prince Abdullah bin al-Hussein. King Faisal did not last for long. The French deposed him and drove him out of Syria less than two years later. He was quickly swept up by the British, who appointed him king of Iraq, the new political map of which was created from the divisions imposed on the Arab Levant.

Between Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration, until the Treaty of Versailles (1920), the colonial West had redrawn the Levant’s map. In Jordan was a Hashemite emirate under the patronage of the British to protect the future Israeli project. Syria was divided by the French colonialists into four “statelets” that were based on sectarian identity. Parts of Syria were turned into the Mutasarrifiyya in Lebanon, which would later become a republic. Parts of northern Syria were given to Turkey (Iskenderun, including Antakya). Thanks to some changes to the maps, under the allure of oil, the British gave Mosul to Iraq.

Soon the Second World War ended and Israel was implanted in the Arab Levant to serve the new imperial project (under the banner of independence!). The Jewish state was made stronger than the fragile nonviable statelets.

For a variety of reasons, we are today seeing a new and expanded plan to divide the area and create new entities.

Syria is mired in a bloody war, in which almost the whole world is involved. Syria is being demolished. The country’s unity in threatened by the destruction of the public facilities, institutions and economy. Even if Syria survives disintegration, it will emerge from this war a weak state, unable to rebuild and ensure stability.

Iraq is on the brink of sectarian and ethnic division. The Kurds, with the help of foreign powers, have achieved “independence” over their own region, with its capital, Erbil. But they have preserved their “federal” relationship with the central government in Baghdad.

It is obvious that many of our brothers — both neighbors and enemies — do not wish that the Iraqi state return to its former unity and strength, which was the result of its huge economic potential, primarily through oil.

Jordan’s monarchy, which has always been a part of the wall shielding Israel, is worried about its population’s concerns about Syria and Iraq. The Jordanian people deny that their government is playing the role of Israel’s security guard. Israel believes that it now has a golden opportunity to become “the central state of the Middle East,” with America’s help.

The oil states in the Arab peninsula and the Gulf are no longer concerned about the Israeli project. They have protected themselves by standing under the American umbrella and by colluding with Turkey publicly and with Israel privately. These states have been undermining the Syrian and Iraqi governments. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood — America’s enemies in ideology but partners in interests — are seeking to exhaust Egypt and undermine its unique role in the Arab world and Africa under the banner of the Islamic cause, which is dividing the Egyptian people and is threatening the state’s immunity.

Egypt, which used to be the model of national unity, is losing its way. The disturbances in the Sinai, which has been abandoned to its fate, offend the state’s dignity and expose the state’s neglect for this area that is vital to Egypt’s national security. The Camp David Accords and the Israel-Egypt peace treaty forbid the Egyptian army from deploying in Sinai in the required strength. Indeed, some have forgotten that the Sinai is part of Egypt and that it was the reason for the 1956 and 1967 Israeli wars before Egypt launched its own war in the Fall of 1973.

Also, Palestine — the land and the holy cause — has been almost forgotten by the Arabs amid the US-sponsored negotiations between the Israeli enemy and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA is launching distress calls to secure the salaries of its administration and security personnel, as well as the needs of a people under occupation, at a time when that administration is drowning in corruption and the Palestinian people are spread under three separate authorities (Fatah and its allies in the West Bank; Hamas in Gaza; and the interior, where the Palestinians live in oppression under Israeli occupation).

The danger facing the Arab Levant is that the present countries might get fragmented. The imminent danger threatening Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya cannot be regarded as the fruit of the Arab Spring. Divisions on the basis of sect and ethnicity threaten many Arab countries with civil war.

Arabs today are like brothers and enemies at the same time. Each subgroup brandishes its religious or ethnic identity to confront the other subgroup in a futile war, in which all will lose. The Arabs have lost their unifying national identity, which used to be above religion. Meanwhile, Israel is moving forward in declaring itself the state of the world’s Jews and is preparing to portray itself as the only genuine state in a region of tribes, clans and sects having no unifying identity.

In short, the fall of Arabism as a unifying identity will mark the start of a series of civil wars among brothers. And once those wars start, nobody knows when or how they will end.