The Palestinians didn't help their cause with Yasser Arafat's Black September uprising in Jordan. Then they topped that up with strong support for Saddam when he invaded Kuwait. Like the ones in Kuwait were literally betraying Kuwaitis to the Iraqi troops.

Oh, and did I forget Lebanon? They literally fomented the civil war.

The reason is fractured is because of the inherent tribalism within the cultures of the region. Strip away the tribalism (Oman, Qatar, UAE to an extent), concentrate the people near a few cities (Egypt), or provide them a unifying overarching culture (Iran, Turkey), and you get some success. In fact, the early Islamic empires were heavily mired in infighting even though they were "unified" under the Caliphate, in spite of the Prophet's calls for the "Ummah" (One Islamic Nation). I would even argue that Islam's biggest contribution to the region was in providing a specific administrative framework with which to shed the tribal infighting and unite culturally similar but disparate peoples together. It's also why Israel succeeded as a nation with its European flavor of nation-state identity.

An Israeli intelligence officer perhaps correctly attributed it to the past culture of water scarcity and needing to protect your water sources. That is, in the desert, there are only so many sources of water, and if someone steals it away from you, you simply die. So that created a culture of inherent suspicion of outsiders and people outside the clan, even though they all share the same customs and culture.

i hope so, they have been one of the biggest sources of discord in the Middle East, funding civil wars in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, funding a coup in Egypt.

What happened this week - they announced they might start selling in yuan, they left the OPEC, and they started a new wealth fund to invest exclusively in China. That gives them an alternative for the dollar-peg since China is their biggest import partner anyways, while also giving their surplus yuan an alternative channel of investment into China.

Still they need the dollar-swap for the essentials - food from India and Pakistan, neither of which will accept their dirhams unless they get exclusive deals (which are not allowed in OPEC). It helps for them that India and Pakistan need lots of oil, and that a dollar peg benefits the UAE more than it does either nation. If the EU plays a greater role in trade, particularly in defence and maritime manufacturing, they will stockpile euros too, to the detriment of the dollar.

Still, they also bought some prime DC acreage to expand their US diplomatic corps, and will likely keep the Washington connection, so long as AI is perceived as useful. Right now, that's the only major export benefit the US provides the Gulf countries. This is them just hedging their bets.

The Yuan is the current bogeyman the Gulf States use when they want attention from the US (not that they’re not diversifying, just that it isn’t a structural shift in a meaningful way). The UAE is making this play right now to make sure they are part of the conversation in deciding how things with Iran end and making sure their influence is sustained after the current administration.

The wealth fund is a way to deploy whatever yuan they receive while gaining political favor with China as well.

Compare that to the innumerable number of Chinese texts on nearly every topic from politics and history and governance to science and engineering (fun fact, the current Indian civil service was a product of the English civil service, which in turn was inspired by the Chinese one).

Compare that to the English, where you might even be able to find the exact amount of tax owed by some Yorkshire peasant in the 16th century.

Even the Indian and South East Asian monastic orders stuck to the oral tradition, in spite of writing material being significantly more abundant over the past millennia.

If you read the Baburnama, you'll even find him lamenting about India's poor record at tax keeping records and historical records relying on oral traditions, where the narrators are prone to exaggerations and embellishments.

Thankfully India's ancient temples are much more resilient than its books, which is why rock carvings themselves are also a rich source of Indian history. The Ashoka pillar in Mehrauli being a fine example (and in effect being a historical record in itself, which is how we know a lot about the Mauryas than some later kingdoms).

Haaretz is often objective by global standards, but is a minority in Israeli media unfortunately. I prefer them to know what's really happening on the ground.

Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye are both Qatari funded, and both tend to be biased to the Islamic viewpoint. That being said, Al Jazeera does invite a lot of experts with opposing viewpoints to their channel regularly, in both their English and Arabic versions, which is how they eked out their name as the most trusted and most viewed media source in the Arab world.

Other news media like Arab News (Saudi), The National (UAE) and Al Arabiya (Saudi) are largely propaganda machines. You won't even get reliable news on what's happening inside their own countries, forget elsewhere.

Sometimes TRT World (Turkey) puts out spicy bits of news that is usually underreported elsewhere, but they're basically the RT of Turkey.

Russia Today, in normal times, often presents a very neutral perspective of Middle Eastern news, especially when most of Western news media is biased towards or silent on Israeli actions. In fact, for most of the attacks reported on GCC countries, RT was and is likely still the most accurate of them all. But of course, these aren't normal times, and their service practically acts like Tasnim English version when it comes to news on Iran.

Also good to remember the English versions of Israeli sites have the propaganda for the US and diaspora. The Hebrew versions give a clearer picture of the internal messaging.

Yes, this is very important when approaching the region. If you want to get the actual pulse, you have to read from the regional language website. For example, Al Jazeera Arabic is actually very extremist by Western standards, just as Israel Hayom in Hebrew is.