United States President Donald Trump descends on Tuesday on the Middle East for a regional tour that will begin in Saudi Arabia and include stops in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. It is a business trip in every sense of the term, involving potentially trillions of dollars in investment and trade deals.
The UAE, for example, has already pledged $1.4 trillion in investments to the US over 10 years in sectors ranging from artificial intelligence and energy to mining and aluminium production. Saudi Arabia, for its part, has committed to investing $600bn in the US over the next four years. According to the Reuters news agency, Trump will also be offering the kingdom an arms package to the tune of $100bn.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the president’s solid history of nepotism and self-enrichment, it just so happens that the Trump Organization is currently presiding over real estate projects and other business ventures in all three Gulf countries he is slated to visit.
And yet one country is conspicuously absent from the regional itinerary despite being the US’s longstanding BFF in the Middle East: Israel, the nation that has for the past 19 months been perpetrating genocide in the Gaza Strip with the help of gobs of US money and weaponry. The official Palestinian death toll stands at nearly 53,000 and counting.
Although the genocide kicked off on the watch of his predecessor President Joe Biden, Trump was quick to embrace mass slaughter as well, announcing not long after reassuming office that he was “sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job” in Gaza. It appears, however, that Israel is taking a bit too long for the US president’s liking – particularly now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prescribed an intensified offensive against an enclave that has already been largely reduced to rubble.
The issue, of course, is not that Trump cares if Palestinian children and adults continue to be massacred and starved to death while Israel takes its sweet time “finishing the job”. Rather, the ongoing genocide is simply hampering his vision of the “Riviera of the Middle East” that will supposedly spring forth from the ruins of Gaza, the creation of which he has outlined as follows: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it.”
So while war may be good for business – just ask the arms industry – it seems that too much war can ultimately be a counterproductive investment, at least from a Trumpian real estate perspective.
In the run-up to Trump’s Middle Eastern expedition, reports increasingly circulated of tensions between the US president and the Israeli prime minister – and not just on the Gaza front. On Sunday, NBC News noted that Netanyahu had been “blindsided – and infuriated – this past week by Trump’s announcement that the US was halting its military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen”.
Even more annoying to the Israeli premier, apparently, is Trump’s refusal to endorse military strikes on Iran. Plus, the US has reportedly discarded the demand that Saudi Arabia normalise relations with Israel as a condition for US support for the kingdom’s civilian nuclear programme.
What, then, does the strained Trump-Netanyahu rapport mean for the ever-so-sacred “special relationship” between the US and Israel? According to an article published by the Israeli outlet Ynetnews: “Despite the tensions, Israeli officials insist behind-the-scenes coordination with the Trump administration remains close, with no real policy rift.”
The dispatch goes on to assure readers that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has “denied rumors that Trump might announce support for a Palestinian state during the visit” to the three Gulf nations. Of course, it’s not quite clear what sort of “Palestinian state” could ever be promoted by the man proposing US ownership of the Gaza Strip and expulsion of the native Palestinian population.
Although Israel may be sidelined on this trip, that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to serve a key function in general US malevolence. Just last month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – source of the idea that there is “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza” – was hosted by Republican officials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. After a dinner held in his honour, Ben-Gvir boasted that Republicans had “expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed”.
Flashy trillion-dollar Gulf deals aside, rest assured that the Trump administration remains as committed as ever to capitalising on Israeli atrocities.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said India “only paused” its military action against Pakistan, in his first speech to the nation since a ceasefire following a fierce military confrontation last week that threatened a fifth all-out war between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Speaking on Wednesday, the ultranationalist Hindu leader said in New Delhi that his government will not make a distinction between governments that support “terrorism” and “terrorist groups”. He said India would “retaliate on its own terms” if there is any future “terror” attack on the country.
The Indian military launched multiple missile attacks targeting sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 6, claiming it had hit “terrorist infrastructure”.
Pakistan rejected that claim.
Pakistan chose to “attack” India rather than combat terrorism, Modi stated, asserting that his country “will not tolerate nuclear blackmail”.
“We will be monitoring every step of Pakistan,” Modi added, saying that “This is not an era of war, but this is not an era of terrorism, either.”
Turning to the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, Modi said, “Terror and trade cannot go together, water and blood cannot flow together.”
The treaty, brokered by the World Bank, has long survived multiple crises between the two rivals. However, India’s recent decision to stop the flow of water signals a sharp diplomatic shift, using water that Pakistan relies on for agricultural and civilian purposes as leverage.
Pakistan’s Finance Minister said in an interview with the Reuters news agency on Monday that the Indus Waters Treaty, unilaterally suspended by India, “has to be rolled back to where it was”.
On Monday, United States President Donald Trump claimed that by helping to broker the ceasefire, his administration had prevented “a nuclear conflict”.
New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for a deadly April 22 attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir in Pahalgam, during which 26 people were killed – a charge Pakistan strongly denies.
According to their partial counts, the fighting since last week killed around 60 civilians on both sides.
Indian and Pakistani military to review ceasefire
India’s and Pakistan’s top military commanders were expected to revisit a recently brokered ceasefire agreement on Monday evening.
The Indian Army earlier reported a “calm night”, as authorities said the night passed peacefully across disputed Kashmir and the international border, with no new incidents reported.
A senior Indian defence official confirmed that talks, originally scheduled for noon local time, were pushed to later in the day. The discussions, analysts say, will likely focus on technical details to prevent future flare-ups rather than shape long-term policy.
Abdul Basit, a South Asia specialist at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the purpose of the exchange is to establish clear lines and avoid missteps.
“The goal is to avoid any miscalculations, because right now one spark could quickly move towards a nuclear catastrophe,” Basit told the AFP news agency.
The spike in hostilities had marked the most serious confrontation between the nuclear-armed neighbours since their last declared conflict in 1999.
As tensions cooled, Indian authorities reopened 32 airports on Monday that had been shut down due to the fighting.
Both sides claim victory
Civilians in Kashmir have suffered the most in the crossfire.
Military leaders in both countries spent Sunday delivering pointed briefings, each asserting they had won while pledging restraint.
“We have delivered the promise we made to our people,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry declared, describing the recent operation as a “success on the battleground”.
Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed added that Pakistan had “re-established deterrence and neutralised key threats”.
India’s Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai insisted that his country had shown “immense restraint,” but warned: “Any threat to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and safety of our citizens will be met with decisive force.”
Both nations remain on high alert despite the temporary calm, as the world watches for signs of lasting de-escalation or a reignition of hostilities.
Move follows February call by jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan for group to lay down its arms.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has announced that it plans to disband and disarm in a move promising an end to decades of conflict with Turkiye.
The move was announced on Monday by the Firat News Agency, a media outlet close to the group. Part of a new peace initiative with Ankara designed to put an end to four decades of violence, the plan to disband comes days after the PKK convened a party congress in northern Iraq.
Following the congress on Friday, the group had said that it had reached “historic” decisions tthat would be shared with the public soon.
Firat reported that a statement by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan outlining his “perspectives and proposals” were read during the congress.
In February, Ocalan – who has been in jail since 1999 – called on the group to lay down its arms and dissolve itself in a bid to end the conflict, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s.
The outlawed PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and most Western states, announced a ceasefire days later but had set conditions to disband, including the establishment of a legal mechanism for peace talks.
Amid ferocious Israeli attacks on Yemen, ostensibly in response to Houthi attacks on Israel, surprising news from the United States seemed to shake matters briefly.
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that a ceasefire had been agreed between his country and the Houthis, claiming the Houthis had bent the knee and this was a victory for the US.
He also praised the Houthis for their bravery and resilience.
This meant the US would no longer be bombing Yemen, and the Houthis would stop firing at ships in the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
There was no mention of Israel in Trump’s announcement – a sign, to many, of a possible chill between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Houthis, for their part, made it clear that the deal does not extend to Israel and they would continue their attacks until Israel allowed aid into Gaza, ending the starvation it is imposing on the people there.
Israel left out?
Israel has been launching attacks on Yemen, claiming it wants to deter the Houthis, who took control of Sanaa in 2014 and already fought a years-long war against the internationally recognised Yemeni government.
Israel’s most recent attack, on Sunday, bore an eerie resemblance to how it has operated when bombing the trapped population of Gaza, issuing “warnings” to people in three Yemeni ports in Hodeidah governorate to flee, with less than an hour’s notice.
Whether this escalation is a reaction to the announced US ceasefire remains to be seen, but many analysts have spoken of a widening rift between Netanyahu and Trump.
Netanyahu has reportedly expressed his frustration with Trump’s Middle East policy in private conversations.
He has been publicly against the US administration’s talks with Iran, claiming there is no diplomatic way to resolve differences with Tehran, yet Iran and the US have continued their talks.
He went on to blame Iran for the Houthis’ attacks, claiming Israel’s attacks are a message to the “Houthis’ sponsors”.
Trump, for his part, has seemed unconcerned.
“It’s worth noting Trump didn’t say anything about [Houthi] attacks on Israel, which seem to be continuing amid this escalation,” Nicholas Brumfield, a Yemen analyst, told Al Jazeera.
“In [this] case, it’s a US drawdown because the Houthis haven’t been attacking international shipping,” Brumfield said. “They’ve been attacking Israel. The US has been doing its thing, and the Houthis have been targeting US ships.”
After Israeli attacks on Monday and Tuesday, which killed at least three people and wounded 35 others and damaged Hodeidah Port and Sanaa Airport, the Houthis promised retaliation.
Journalists take pictures of a plane Israel destroyed at Sanaa International Airport on May 7, 2025 [Khaled Abdullah/Reuters]
That kind of statement is typical of the Houthis, who have managed to weather more than a decade of attacks by forces with far superior military capabilities.
Air strikes by the US and United Kingdom on Yemen in early 2024 were unable to stop the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea traffic.
Years of air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition supporting Yemen’s internationally recognised government taught the Houthis to keep their military infrastructure agile, analysts told Al Jazeera.
A senior US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that recent US attacks on the Houthis have pushed leaders underground after the killing of some key military commanders.
However, unlike under US President Joe Biden’s administration, the attacks under Trump have been indiscriminate and have led to more civilian deaths. More than 250 people have been killed by US attacks on Yemen since mid-March, including at least 68 people at a centre housing detained African refugees and migrants in late April.
Experts told Al Jazeera that despite the increased ferocity of those attacks, the Houthis have not been deterred.
“The Houthis aren’t going to stop,” Brumfield said.
Israel still striking
The Houthis have made their stance clear vis-à-vis the agreement with the US and the continuation of attacks on Israel, which has also made clear that it plans to keep attacking.
“The stated aim is to deter [the Houthis] or deplete their military capabilities to the point that the Houthis cannot target Israel any more, but these are both very unrealistic goals,” Hannah Porter, an independent Yemen analyst, told Al Jazeera.
Israel already considers that it has diminished the capabilities of two of its biggest foes, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, over the past 19 months.
But trying something like that on the Houthis would be a vastly different challenge, she said.
“Israel has probably not gathered the amount of intel on the Houthis that they have on Hamas or Hezbollah, so tracking and targeting leaders will be harder,” Porter said.
“More importantly, the geographic area is much larger in northern Yemen, meaning that there are far more potential targets.”
“The terrain is a factor, too,” she added. “Northern Yemen is very mountainous with plenty of places to hide people and weapons.”
For now, Israel and the Houthis seem intent on continuing their exchange of attacks. And the first to suffer will be the people of Yemen.
Israel struck numerous targets in recent days in Yemen, including Sanaa’s airport and the port in Hodeidah, which experts said is likely to exacerbate Yemen’s dire humanitarian situation.
Israel destroyed at least three civilian planes in the attacks.
Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike on Sanaa on May 6, 2025 [Adel al-Khader/Reuters]
Yemen is already suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. More than 18.2 million people require humanitarian assistance and protection services, according to the United Nations.
More than 17.1 million Yemenis suffer acute food shortages, and about five million are on the brink of famine.
While analysts said Israel’s attacks on ports will not be a “knockout blow”, they are among a matrix of factors that leave many Yemenis in an increasingly precarious position.
“The humanitarian situation will just get worse,” Raiman Al-Hamdani, a Yemen researcher with the international development company ARK, told Al Jazeera.
“Destroying the two main ports of northern Yemen, where the majority of the population lives, coupled with the FTO [“foreign terrorist organisation”] designation with cuts to the aid system around the world and the deteriorating economy … is a recipe for [unprecedented] humanitarian disaster.”
“[Israel’s attacks] are a continuation of its strategy. It’s out of spite, targets civil infrastructure and the policy of creating human suffering,” Al-Hamdani said.
Both sides seem unwilling to stop, however.
“I cannot see anything quite good coming out of this unless the war Israel is waging on Gaza comes to some form of truce,” Al-Hamdani said.
Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir — On Saturday morning at Fateh Kadal, a densely packed neighbourhood on the sloping embankment of the Jhelum river in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s largest city, 62-year-old Hajira wrapped a cotton scarf with a brown paisley design around her shoulders.
With her face muscles tense and sweat beading across her upper lip, she sat on the cement floor of a government-run grains store.
“Can you make it quick?” she called to the person manning the store.
Hajira comes to the store every month to submit her biometric details, as required by the government to secure the release of her monthly quota of subsidised grains, which her family of four depends on.
But this time was different. The past few days have been unprecedented for residents of Indian-administered Kashmir. Drones hovered overhead, airports were shut down, explosions rang out, people were killed in cross-border fire and the region prepared for the possibility of an all-out war.
“He made me stand in the queue,” she said, flinching from knee pain, referring to the store operator. “But there’s uncertainty around. I just want my share of rice so I can quickly return. A war is coming.”
Then, on Saturday evening, Hajira breathed a sigh of relief. United States President Donald Trump announced that he had succeeded in mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
“I thank Allah for this,” Hajira said, smiling sheepishly. “Perhaps he understood that I didn’t have the means to endure the financial hardship that a war-like situation would have caused.”
On Sunday morning, Trump went a step further, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that would try to work with India and Pakistan to resolve their longstanding dispute over Kashmir, a region both countries partly control, but where they each claim the part the other administers.
Political analyst Zafar Choudhary, based in the city of Jammu in southern Indian-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera that New Delhi would not be happy about Trump’s statement. India has long argued that Pakistan-sponsored “terrorism” is the primary reason for tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
However, “Trump’s offer underlines the fact that Kashmir remains central to India-Pakistan confrontations”, Choudhary said.
And for Kashmiris, the hope stemming from the fragile pause in fighting between India and Pakistan, and Trump’s offer to mediate talks on Kashmir, is tempered by scepticism borne from a decades-long, desperate wait for peace.
A Kashmiri family watches as projectiles fly over the sky in Indian-administered Kashmir, Saturday, May 10, 2025 [Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo]
‘Never been more frightened’
Hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris stood in the direct line of fire between India and Pakistan in recent days.
As the neighbouring nations launched missiles and drones at each other, communities in Indian-administered Kashmir near the de-facto border with Pakistan also witnessed cross-border shelling on a scale unseen in decades, triggering an exodus of people towards safer locations.
The shadow of conflict has stalked their lives for nearly four decades, since an armed rebellion first erupted against the Indian government in the late 1980s. Then, in 2019, the government scrapped Indian-administered Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status amid a huge security crackdown – thousands of people were imprisoned.
On April 22, a brutal attack by gunmen on tourists at Pahalgam left 26 civilians dead, shattering the normalcy critics had accused India of projecting in the disputed region.
Since then, in addition to a diplomatic tit-for-tat and missile exchanges with Pakistan, the Indian government has intensified its crackdown on Indian-administered Kashmir.
It has demolished the homes of rebels accused of links to the Pahalgam attack, raided other homes across the region and detained approximately 2,800 people, 90 of whom have been booked under the Public Safety Act, a draconian preventive detention law. The police also summoned many journalists and detained at least one for “promoting secessionist ideology”.
By Sunday, while a sense of jubilation swept through the region over the ceasefire, many people were still cautious, doubtful even, about whether the truce brokered by Trump would hold.
Just hours after both countries declared a cessation of hostilities, loud explosions rang out in major urban centres across Indian-administered Kashmir as a swarm of kamikaze drones from Pakistan raced across the airspace.
Many residents raced to the terraces of their apartments and homes to capture videos of the drones being brought down by India’s defence systems, a trail of bright red dots arcing across the night sky before exploding in midair.
As part of the emergency protocols, the authorities turned off the electricity supply. Fearing that the debris from drones would fall on them, residents ran for safety. The surge of drones through the night skies also touched off sirens, triggering a sense of dread.
“I don’t think I have ever been more frightened before,” said Hasnain Shabir, a 24-year-old business graduate from Srinagar. “The streets have been robbed of all their life. If the prelude to war looks like this, I don’t know what war will look like.”
A group of Kashmiri women wait for transportation to leave the area after overnight shelling from Pakistan at Gingal village in the Uri district, Indian-administered Kashmir, Friday, May 9, 2025 [Dar Yasin/AP Photo]
A fragile ceasefire
Hours after the ceasefire was announced on Saturday, India accused Pakistan of violating the truce by shelling border regions. Residents across major towns in Kashmir were on their toes, once again, after drones reappeared in the skies.
One of the worst-affected places in Kashmir these days is Uri, a picturesque town of pear orchards and walnut groves close to India’s contested border with Pakistan.
The village is surrounded by majestic mountains through which the Jhelum river flows. It is the final frontier on the Indian-administered side before the hills pave the way to Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Parts of Uri saw intense shelling, forcing the residents to leave their homes and look for safety. On May 8, officials told Al Jazeera that a woman, Nargis Bashir, was killed in her car as she and her family tried to flee the border region, like thousands of others, after flying shrapnel tore through the vehicle. Three of her family members were wounded.
Muhammad Naseer Khan, 60, a former army serviceman, was huddling in his room when Pakistani artillery fire hit a nearby military post, with metal shrapnel shards blasting through the walls of his house. “The blast has damaged one side of my home,” Khan said, wearing a traditional blue shirt and a tweed coat.
“I don’t know if this place is even liveable,” he said, his bright blue eyes betraying a sense of fear.
Despite the ceasefire, his two daughters and many others in his family who had left for a relative’s house, away from the disputed border, are sceptical about returning. “My children are refusing to return. They have no guarantee that guns won’t roar again,” he said.
Suleman Sheikh, a 28-year-old resident in Uri, recalled his childhood years when his grandfather would talk about the Bofors artillery gun stationed inside a military garrison in the nearby village of Mohra.
“He told us that the last time this gun had roared was in 1999, when India and Pakistan clashed on the icy peaks of Kargil. It is a conventional belief here that if this gun roared again, things are going to get too bad,” he said.
That’s what happened at 2am on May 8. As the Bofors gun in Mohra prepared to fire ammunition across the mountains into Pakistan, Sheikh felt the ground shaking beneath him. An hour and a half later, a shell fired from the other side hit an Indian paramilitary installation nearby, making a long hissing noise before striking with a thud.
Hours after Sheikh spoke to Al Jazeera for this report, another shell landed on his home. The rooms and the portico of his house collapsed, according to a video he shared with Al Jazeera.
He had refused to leave his home despite his family’s pleas to join them. “I was here to protect our livestock,” Sheikh said. “I didn’t want to leave them alone.”
Unlike the rest of the Kashmir Valley, where apple cultivation brings millions of dollars in income for the region, Uri is relatively poor. Villagers mostly work odd jobs for the Indian Army, which maintains large garrisons there, or farm walnuts and pears. Livestock rearing has turned into a popular vocation for many in the town.
“We have seen the firsthand experience of what war feels like. It is good that the ceasefire has taken place. But I don’t know if it will hold or not,” Sheikh said, his face downcast. “I pray that it does.”
People walk at a open market, a day after the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, Sunday, May 11, 2025 [Mukhtar Khan/AP Photo]
‘How long must this continue?’
Back in Srinagar, residents are slowly returning to the rhythm of their daily lives. Schools and colleges continue to remain closed, and people are avoiding unnecessary travel.
The scenes of racing drone fleets in the skies and the accompanying blasts are seared into public memory. “Only in the evening will we come to know whether this ceasefire has held on,” said Muskaan Wani, a student of medicine at Government Medical College, Srinagar, said on Sunday.
It did, overnight, but the tension over whether it will last remains.
Political experts attribute the general scepticism about the ceasefire to the unresolved political issues in the region – a point that was echoed in Trump’s statement on Sunday, in which he referred to a possible “solution concerning Kashmir”.
“The problem to begin with is the political alienation [of Kashmiris],” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a former professor and head of the political science department at the University of Kashmir.
“People in Kashmir feel humiliated for what has happened to them in the last few years, and there haven’t been any significant efforts to win them over. When there’s humiliation, there is suspicion.”
Others in Indian-administered Kashmir expressed their anger at both countries for ruining their lives.
“I doubt that our feelings as Kashmiris even matter,” said Furqan, a software engineer in Srinagar who only gave his first name. “Two nuclear powers fought, caused damage and casualties at the borders, gave their respective nations a spectacle to watch, their goals were achieved, and then they stopped the war.
“But the question is, who suffered the most? It’s us. For the world, we are nothing but collateral damage.”
Furqan said his friends were sceptical about the ceasefire when the two countries resumed shelling on the evening of May 10.
“We all already were like, ‘It is not gonna last,’” he said, “And then we heard the explosions again.”
Muneeb Mehraj, a 26-year-old resident of Srinagar who studies management in the northern Indian state of Punjab, echoed Furqan.
“For others, the war may be over. A ceasefire has been declared. But once again, it’s Kashmiris who have paid the price – lives lost, homes destroyed, peace shattered,” he said. “How long must this cycle continue?”
“We are exhausted,” Mehraj continued. “We don’t want another temporary pause. We want a lasting, permanent solution.”
