Pakistan, Abraham Accords and the radical Islamist right
As US President Donald J. Trump announced the 20-point peace plan for Gaza in a presser alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 29 and invited world leaders in Sharm El Sheikh later to formalize the ceasefire, he mentioned a list of Muslim and Arab countries on board that backed his initiative for “peace in the Middle East.” A country to make it to the list, whose leaders also received a mention from the US President, was Pakistan. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke fondly of POTUS at the Egypt summit and had met him before on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York and at the White House alongside Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir — who Trump later called “a very important guy” and his “favorite field marshal“. Islamabad was also among the first leaders to react to the Gaza plan announcement, with PM Sharif tweeting in favor of the plan and stating, “I am also convinced that durable peace between the Palestinian people and Israel would be essential in bringing political stability and economic growth to the region.”
The tweet stirred debate on Pakistani social media spaces on the future prospects of Pakistan becoming a party to the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements initiated by the Trump administration in 2020 aimed at normalization of ties between Israel and Arab and Muslim states — given strides in ties with the US lately and the signing of the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia — only for Pakistani leaders to backtrack from fully endorsing the peace plan later due to internal pressure and opposition from Palestine supporters and extremist religious parties. At the Sharm El Sheikh summit, Trump also expressed hope to see the Abraham Accords expand, citing there was no more Gaza or Iran issue to be a hindrance.
Even though Pakistan has always backed a two-state solution, the discourse in the public sphere has consistently been heavily anti-Israel, antisemitic and religiously-motivated to back a Palestinian state with “Al-Quds al-Sharif” as its capital. While globally, many pro-Palestine movements have formed and grown out of some sort of a humanitarian concern for Gaza, in Pakistan, Palestine is used as a political tool by extremist parties — like the far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) — to propagate antisemitic vitriol, malign the West and issue calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Hundreds of thousands of the TLP supporters attempted to march to the US Embassy in Islamabad “to protest the killings in Gaza” at a time when the world, including Palestinians, were welcoming the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after two years of fighting. Pakistan’s minority communities over the last few decades have particularly been on the receiving end of violence in the form of attacks and mob-lynching spearheaded by the same TLP and extremist parties who now exploit the Palestinian issue to fuel more hatred, intolerance and chaos within the country.
At a time when Islamabad is seeing progress in its relations with the United States and China while also battling a renewed wave of terrorism in Balochistan and KPK, and fighting the Taliban on the Afghan front amid Indian threats of annihilation, internal extremist elements that have long used religion to issue death threats and subjugate religious minorities now use Palestine as a tool to vandalize and challenge the writ of the state, posing a serious threat to not just Islamabad’s geopolitical advances but also its image. The extremists also continue to influence Pakistan’s policy towards Israel — an incendiary subject given religious fervor — where decisions are made based on presumed ummah unity instead of centering national interest and pragmatism. Opposing groups say Pakistan can actually technologically and militarily benefit through cooperation with Israel.
Historically, Pakistan has abstained from forging diplomatic ties with the Jewish state due to the Palestinian question, but both nuclear powers have long held backchannel talks on military and security matters and their respective foreign ministers met publicly in 2005. Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, was the first leader in the country to make direct contact with Israel and hint at the possibility of future ties. Post 2020, with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain establishing relations with Israel, an opening was created for the possibility of future dialogue, albeit derailed by Hamas’s terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, and the Israeli government’s subsequent offensive on Gaza with accusations of genocide. But extremism is one of the core reasons for Pakistan’s hostile stance towards Israel despite no direct threats posed by the Jewish state. The Pakistani passport bars its citizens from traveling to Israel, stating it is “valid for all countries of the world except Israel” — the only country it categorically forbids its citizens from travelling.
Pakistan’s policy towards Israel, despite consistent historical opposition to recognition from its leaders, should cater to realism and realpolitik and not sentiments about ummah given the security challenges Pakistan faces from its neighbors in the current geopolitical landscape. Islamabad needs to find a delicate balance between countering the India-Israel alliance and growing camaraderie while advocating for Palestinians without appeasing radicals and sabotaging its own strategic goals. More so, it should not leave a vacuum for its adversary on the eastern front (New Delhi) to benefit by creating an enemy out of Israel, which does not pose a direct threat to Pakistan, but extremist elements and jingoistic parties insist on creating one only to Islamabad’s own detriment.
