WILL the Middle East crisis prompt the Arab League at last to do something coherent and useful? Surely not; it is hard to imagine that day ever arriving.

On the contrary, Hezbollah’s attack on Israel has exposed deep divisions in the Arab world that have paralysed the league, the 22-member bloc that has often served only to advertise how little in common the region has.

But the bitterness of that rift holds out hope for profound change in the region’s politics. The most important remarks in the past week may turn out to be those from Saudi Arabia, which has criticised Hezbollah openly, despite knowing the instinctive support that many Saudis will feel for a group able to take on the US-Israeli might.

The seizure of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, the Shia militant group based in Lebanon, has placed many Arab governments in a quandary, particularly the Sunni ones. They are well aware that their people, even if Sunni not Shia, watching the unstinting satellite pictures of Lebanese children killed by Israeli missiles, may embrace Hezbollah as champions. Many Arab governments have played to those instincts in reflexively supporting those who attack Israel.

At the same time, that is an untenable position for allies of the West, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar. Sunni leaders’ alarm at Hezbollah’s move also reveals their deep fear about the emergence of a “Shia crescent” of power, as King Abdullah of Jordan provocatively dubbed it in 2004. That would run from Iran, through formerly Sunni-led Iraq, to Syria (a largely Sunni country led by a Shia splinter group), and to southern Lebanon itself.

There may yet be an Arab summit, of sorts. Yesterday Lebanon and Djibouti joined Algeria, Egypt, Qatar, Sudan and the Palestinians in supporting a Yemeni proposal for emergency talks. But a weekend meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo got nowhere. “Don’t ask me what to do,” Amr Moussa, the league’s Secretary-General, said after the meeting, although that is precisely what the world was asking him.

The league aims for consensus, which it rarely finds, even on easier challenges. In this conflict, that may be impossible. The weekend’s meeting revealed the rift between the Western-leaning governments and those, led by Syria, who are sympathetic to Hezbollah.

Only Saudi Arabia has criticised Hezbollah directly and bluntly, calling the seizure of the soldiers irresponsible. But Egypt and Jordan have also criticised Hezbollah’s “adventurism” and said that the region could do without that quality.

If only. The league’s other wing has been loud in its support for Hezbollah: Yemen called for members to “end any co-operation with Israel”.

This rift is deeper than in the past and the Saudi remarks, which might sound mild at face value, mark a dramatic shift by that cautious regime.

For once, Saudi Arabia has rejected the tactic of complimenting Israel’s opponents. That does not reflect the regime’s sense of security, but the opposite. It is aware of the restiveness of its own Shia minority population and the potential militancy of its underemployed young men. It does not want to see the Shia crescent grow.

So it has chosen to berate the new Shia threat rather than pander to its audience at home. That is not a recipe for unity in the Arab League, but it may be one for progress.

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