Pakistan’s shifting positions on the plight of Palestinians and relations with Israel

It is ironic that Pakistan and Israel are both countries created in the name of religion, at around the same time (in 1947 and 1948, respectively), and yet they have no formal relations. All Pakistani passports include the inscription that the document is valid for travel to all countries around the world, except Israel. While Pakistan’s animosity toward Israel is rooted in the displacement of Palestinians, it has also served as a means of burnishing the country’s credentials within the community of Muslim nations and pushing back against India, which maintains increasingly close ties with Israel.

Given the current turmoil in the Middle East, unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the latter’s disproportionate response and ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has brought the region to the cusp of a broader conflagration, it is useful to consider how the largest Muslim-majority countries further afield are reacting.

A complex history

Soon after its own establishment, Pakistan opposed the idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine and voted against the partition plan for Palestine via the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. Having gained an independent homeland for Muslims through the British partition of the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan’s leaders were motivated by ideas of pan-Islamic solidarity as well as realpolitik compulsions to ingratiate themselves with emerging Middle Eastern powers. Pakistan sided with the Arab countries during their conflicts with Israel. Pakistan was the only country, besides Iraq and the United Kingdom, that recognized the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. A Pakistani pilot even shot down an Israeli aircraft using a Syrian fighter jet in the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.

However, Pakistan was not always a staunch supporter of the Palestinian people themselves, particularly when their cause conflicted with the national interests of another Arab nation. In 1970, Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s future army chief and president but then a brigadier, led a major assault on restive Palestinian refugees in Jordan who were backed by Iraq and Syria, in what has since become known as Black September. Conversely, many prominent Pakistani democratic and military leaders over the past several decades have tried to explore the possibility of normalizing ties with Israel. Pakistan’s then Army Chief and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf even attended a high-profile dinner with American Jewish leaders in New York in 2005, where he stated he would take steps to forge ties with Israel if the Middle East peace process progressed. Israel, too, has been keen to create a relationship with the populous South Asian Muslim nation, beginning with the establishment of commercial ties. However, Pakistan officially still endorses the need for a two-state solution that leads to a viable, sovereign, and contiguous state for Palestine, established based on pre-1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital.

Conversely, religio-political groups within Pakistan have consistently maintained a staunch anti-Israel position for decades. The Pakistani establishment has also played the “Israel card” at different junctures in a bid to fuel the anti-India narrative. Alongside supporting the demand for a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders, the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation is often equated with that of Kashmiris against Indian occupation.

Drawing on these sentiments, which often conflate Jewish and Israeli identities, mainstream Pakistani politicians have sporadically accused each other of being Zionist conspirators and sympathizers. Moreover, extremist militant groups, which target the Pakistani state and citizens, have even justified going after health workers, claiming that these vaccination drives are part of a Jewish (and Christian) conspiracy to make Muslim children impotent.

Despite the pervasiveness of anti-Israel sentiment within Pakistan, there was again some momentum within Pakistan to normalize ties with Israel on the heels of the Abraham Accords in 2020, after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed normalization agreements with Israel. Amid speculation that Saudi Arabia would be next to establish ties with Israel, some Pakistani analysts also began arguing that it was high time for Pakistan to change its anti-Israel stance. Some of these proponents pointed to the purported economic benefits of recognizing Israel, which could include technical cooperation to help boost agricultural yields, for instance. More realpolitik arguments in favor of establishing diplomatic ties have been motivated by the need to neutralize the growing security alliance between Israel and India, and to appease the United States and the UAE, especially following the latter’s normalization with Israel in 2020. Yet the unfolding tragedy in Gaza over these past 10 months, alongside growing tensions within the broader Middle East, have made it much more difficult for Saudi Arabia, and for Pakistan, to recognize Israel.

Impact of the Gaza war

As elsewhere in the Muslim world, anti-Israeli sentiment within Pakistan has spiked due to the war in Gaza as well as the growing violence in the West Bank from Israeli military raids and settler attacks. Initially, Pakistan's Foreign Office made a cautious statement merely expressing concern about the escalating violence in the region. But as the death toll of Palestinian civilians continued to mount, Pakistani officials and politicians began condemning the Israeli military campaign in Gaza in no uncertain terms, often referring to it as a “genocide.” The country’s media outlets have also been drawing frequent attention to the tragic civilian toll of the Israeli incursion. In April this year, the UN’s Human Rights Council adopted a non-binding resolution that was spearheaded by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation calling for an end to the sale, transfer, and diversion of military aid to Israel. Despite American displeasure, Islamabad hosted then Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in late April 2024, just a few months after their armies traded cross-border missile strikes targeting alleged terrorists in mid-January. The government of Pakistan has also categorically denounced Israel for assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, then Hamas’ political leader, in Tehran at the end of July. A parliamentary resolution termed the killing a “deliberate conspiracy to sabotage efforts to stop the ongoing oppression and brutality against Palestinians.” However, neither Pakistan’s government nor its military has shown any inclination to offer tangible support to any of the regional countries bearing the brunt of this conflict.

Echoing the position of the establishment, Pakistani opinion makers are now also using the Palestinian plight to further discredit their arch-rival and neighbor India. Varied media outlets persistently highlight the close ties between the hardline government in Israel and the ultranationalist incumbents in India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under whom India has flipped on its traditional support for Palestinians. Recently, a senior former Pakistani official even accused India’s premier spy agency of collaborating with the Israelis to assassinate Haniyeh. A senior journalist on a popular news channel further claimed that the recent Hamas attack on Israel has helped foil an Indian and American conspiracy against China, an increasingly close Pakistani ally, by derailing the US-led India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor deal inked last year.

Whipping up anti-Israeli sentiment is an easy target for the weak coalition government, desperate for legitimacy amid widespread disgruntlement over the country’s bleak economic situation and rampant political polarization. The Pakistani government has designated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a terrorist and a perpetrator of war crimes. Besides sending humanitarian aid shipments to Palestinians, the government also promised in July to form a committee to boycott international companies considered supportive of Israel. Many consumers in Pakistani cities have already been participating in such boycotts. However, it is unlikely that the government itself will officially follow suit, given the risk of losing desperately needed revenue and annoying international lenders like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, which will not take any attempts to prevent foreign companies from accessing the Pakistani market lightly. Conversely, morality is hardly a compelling force when it comes to furthering national interests. Thus, if ongoing efforts to broker a meaningful cessation of hostilities bear fruit, and the major Gulf countries assume a prominent role in reconstruction efforts in the war-torn Palestinian territories, the Pakistani establishment may also decide to reassess its position concerning Israel once again.

 

Syed Mohammad Ali is a Non-Resident Scholar with MEI’s Afghanistan and Pakistan Program. Dr. Ali has extensive experience working with multilateral, bilateral, governmental, and non-governmental organizations on varied international development challenges.

Photo by AMER HILABI/AFP via Getty Images