Israel is a red line for Pakistan – Firstpost

Pakistan has, constitutionally and politically, long regarded Israel as an illegitimate state and consistently withheld formal recognition. As a country carved out of a separatist movement and envisioned as a Muslim homeland, Pakistan’s national identity remains deeply linked with the broader Islamic world. As such, its refusal to recognise Israel goes beyond its foreign policy and is embedded in the ideological foundations of the nation itself. Consequently, support for the Palestinian cause has become a core expression of Pakistan’s Islamic nationalism and its solidarity with the Muslim ummah.

It is from this historical context and ideological foundations that any political discussions surrounding the Abraham Accords vis-à-vis Pakistan must begin.

This conversation recently took centre stage following the demands of US President Donald Trump calling on Muslim states involved in the Iran negotiations, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan, to sign the Abraham Accords. In a social media post, he stated that once a deal with Iran is negotiated, it should become “mandatory that all of these countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords”.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, in a television interview with a local channel, pushed back, stating that joining the accord would undermine the state’s “fundamental ideologies”. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar stated, “We are not ready to recognise Israel until the two-state solution to the Palestine conflict is accepted. There is no change in our stated policy on the Palestine issue.”

These statements should be seen as a signal to Washington, but more importantly to the domestic audience.

To understand why Pakistan’s position will likely be immovable, one needs to understand what Israel means to Pakistan’s domestic politics, identity, and its streets.

Coming into existence nine months apart, in 1947 and 1948, the creation of Israel was seen as an act of Western imposition by Pakistan’s founding leadership under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The following decades involved active, overt opposition to the Israeli state, including Pakistan’s involvement in military actions against Israel. A Pakistan Air Force (PAF) pilot flew combat sorties for Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War after being sent as a military adviser to the Royal Jordanian Air Force in 1966; he was credited with shooting down four Israeli aircraft. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, 16 Pakistani pilots volunteered to support Arab forces. Diplomatically, Pakistan has consistently criticised Israeli settlements in multilateral forums, voting against the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine and maintaining that it will deny normalisation of ties with Israel until an independent Palestinian state is established within pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The closest association between Pakistan and Israel occurred under General Pervez Musharraf, who, in September 2005, became the first Pakistani leader to address the American Jewish Congress in New York. The speech drew praise from Jewish American leaders, including a standing ovation; however, it faced criticism from Pakistan’s Islamic political parties. That said, the normalisation never went through, as Musharraf himself later acknowledged in 2015 that it would have been “political suicide” for Pakistan, considering the deep pro-Palestinian public sentiment.

An instructive response to Pakistan’s position on Israeli-American pressure can be traced back to Trump’s first term. In December 2017, when Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Pakistan’s response was marked by intensity. Politically, Pakistan’s Foreign Office termed it a violation of international law and Parliament passed a resolution condemning the decision. However, the street response was far more visceral, with hundreds of protesters rallying against Trump. Effigies of Trump were torched and slogans of “Down with America” and “Down with Israel” were heard in Karachi, Lahore, and Multan. Compare that with today’s expectations of formal normalisation and diplomatic recognition.

Expectedly, Pakistan’s Islamist and mainstream political parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), have already condemned Trump’s demand. Any analysis of Pakistan’s position on Israel lacks credibility without confronting the role of its religious groups, especially Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). While the TLP established itself in the context of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, its political theology also places the Palestinian cause at the centre of its ideology. More than any other group, it has demonstrated the street power to physically halt governments in the past. A softer position by Islamabad, one that is seen as ceding to Trump’s demands, risks provoking pushback from the TLP, an opposition that would manifest not in Parliament, but on the streets of Pakistan’s major cities. And the civil-military leadership is aware of this.

The Anti-Americanism in Pakistan

Despite the recent Munir-Trump bonhomie, structural anti-Americanism in the public psyche remains deeply embedded. Decades of being treated as a disposable partner by the US — from the Soviet-Afghan conflict to the War on Terror post-9/11, which involved drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas — have produced scepticism towards American intentions. For anyone familiar with US-Pakistan history, the current nature of ties is transactional — with the US administration setting aside moral qualms to appease a man from whom it stands to benefit.

The Munir-Trump relationship may have marginally softened anti-American sentiment in elite circles; however, this perception does not percolate to the masses. When Trump praises Munir but also ‘mandates’ Pakistan to recognise a state that most Pakistanis consider illegitimate, the contradiction is evident to the public.

Any path towards normalising ties with Israel would require a set of actions that seem politically intangible and unimaginable. For starters, Pakistan would need to formally recognise the existence of Israel as a sovereign state. This remains inconceivable for a country whose passport literally says: “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.” Besides street mobilisation from opposition and religious parties, the military establishment, whose own institutional identity is partly built around the defence of Muslim causes, would require alignment.

In that light, Trump’s demand should come as a rude shock to Pakistan’s leadership, which likely expected strategic dividends in the form of economic concessions, debt relief, and diplomatic goodwill for its interlocutor role between the US and Iran. Instead, Islamabad finds itself confronting the transactional nature of Trump’s diplomacy and its own ideological red lines.

(The writer is Research Analyst for Pakistan Studies at the Takshashila Institution. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views)