Diplomacy: Pakistan’s say on the Middle East conflict

Last week, Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned Israel and strongly affirmed Pakistan’s support of Palestinians in the ongoing conflict. In a statement, Khan referred to the Palestinians’ “legitimate struggle for rights” and promised to mobilize the international community.

Non-Arab Pakistan may be thousands of miles from the fighting, but its words of support carry some weight. Pakistan is the sole Islamic country owning a nuclear arsenal. Moreover, its army, totaling more than 1 million with its reserves, is perhaps the best trained in the Islamic world.

How much has changed? Early this year Pakistan was under some pressure from the UAE to join it along with several other Muslim states in normalizing relations with Israel. Itself standoffish, Saudi Arabia was nevertheless believed to be encouraging the move for Pakistan.

But while on a visit to Turkey, Khan rejected the idea outright, citing as his reason Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He likened injustices to Palestinians demanding a homeland to those Muslims faced in their decision to create Pakistan.

This was not the first attempt to get Pakistan to soften its views of Israel. During his term in office, Pervez Musharraf at one point invited dialogue on the issue. Several newspaper columnists and others took him up on the suggestion, many making the case that, by establishing diplomatic and other ties with Israel, Pakistan could possibly limit Israel’s growing military and economic alignment with India.

With apparent Israeli approval, unofficial probes to locate approachable Pakistani officials were attempted, one by a major American Jewish organization. But in face of an almost immediate domestic backlash against his initiative, Musharraf shut down the press, and discussion of normalizing relations with Israel ended.

Khan’s joining the chorus condemning Israel was a foregone conclusion given Pakistan’s current political climate and Saudi Arabia’s surprisingly strong stance denouncing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. But as in the past, the broad backing by Pakistan and other governments for the Palestinian cause is a low-cost policy, one largely limited to rhetoric. Vigorous expressions of solidarity with Palestinian brethren, however sincere, serve mainly to please domestic constituencies.

For Pakistan, it also offers an opportunity to draw a parallel with the suffering of Muslims in Kashmir. Whatever drives them, neither Pakistan nor any other Muslim state seems interested in having the latest Israeli-Palestinian crisis widen to a regional conflict.

This opinion initially appeared on the Middle East Institute website.