Israel–Pakistan relations


Israel-Pakistan relations refers to the bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the State of Israel—which, despite the lack of official diplomatic relations have been defined by multiple instances of close covert coordination and cooperation during events such as the Soviet–Afghan War and Black September conflict. Both nations were established based on similar ideological declarations. Diplomatic ties continue to remain unestablished due to Pakistan's refusal to officially recognize Israel until a viable solution is reached in regards to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nevertheless, Pakistan and Israel regularly use their embassies and consulates-general in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey to mediate and exchange information with each other. In 2010 report, Pakistan, following up on reports received in Washington, was believed to have used its embassy in Ankara to pass on newly-discovered information about potential attacks on Israeli targets in India in October 2009, by the organization which performed 2008 Mumbai attacks earlier, according to WikiLeaks.

Country comparison

Background

Earlier, Muhammad Ali Jinnah played pivotal role in the awareness struggle on the Palestine issue in the Subcontinent. In post Khilafat Movement scenario, All India Muslim League kept staunch support to Palestine and rights of the Arabs. The decade of 1930's witnessed significant developments on Palestine under leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. League, under Jinnah, not only broadened its basis among the masses but also took up Palestine issue through various measures inside and outside India. Jinnah and Allama Muhammad Iqbal put Palestine issue on top of agenda list of the meetings
and sessions and opined that 'Balfour Declaration was unjust'.
On October 12, 1945 Jinnah said

History

Just a few days after partition, Jinnah announced to send a delegation to Cairo under Abdur Rehman Siddiqui to participate in Inter-Parliamentary World Congress on Palestine to be held in last week of August 1947. Furthermore, Zafrullah Khan was sent to represent Pakistan in the United Nations. He attended deliberations of UN Ad Hoc Committee over Palestine and vividly declared Balfour Declaration as illegitimate and clearly rejected partition of Palestine that Pakistan would not accept that unjust plan.
David Ben-Gurion—the first prime minister of Israel—made an attempt in May 1948 to establish official diplomatic relations with Pakistan when he sent a telegram to Muhammad Ali Jinnah—the founding father and first governor-general of the Dominion of Pakistan—but received no particular response. Jinnah, who had in fact been suffering from severe health issues, succumbed to his illnesses in September 1948. By 1949, Israel's Foreign Ministry believed that it was possible to open an Israeli legation in Karachi, then the capital of Pakistan, or at least to begin conducting trade openly. Initial contact between Pakistani diplomats in London and representatives of Israel along with various Jewish organizations was made in early 1950. The Pakistani government was asked to issue passage permits to India for a few hundred Jews who wished to leave Afghanistan and emigrate to Israel. The government refused to allow them to transit through Pakistan, citing the Palestinian exodus of 1948 and their opposition to Israel, following which the Afghan Jews left through Iran.
In 1952, Pakistani foreign minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan promoted hardline policies towards Israel, and advocated for Pakistan's unwavering support for Palestine in light of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Thus, Khan's policy laid the groundwork for Pakistan's strategic ties with Arab states.

Political tension

Pakistani attitudes towards Israel

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel's diplomatic mission in Washington received information that Pakistan was trying to provide military assistance to the Palestinians alongside rumours that a Pakistani military battalion would be sent to Palestine to fight the Israelis. Pakistan had supposedly bought 250,000 rifles in Czechoslovakia that were apparently meant for the Arabs. A later discovery revealed that Pakistan had bought three military-grade aircraft in Italy for the Egyptians.
The Pakistan Air Force sent a limited few of its fighter pilots to engage the Israelis in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, greatly bolstering the Palestinians who virtually had no foundation to fight the superior Israeli forces and consequently suffered repeated defeats. A Pakistani fighter pilot, Saiful Azam, had shot down at least four Israeli fighter planes during the Six-Day War. After the Yom Kippur War, Pakistan and the PLO signed an agreement for training PLO officers in Pakistani military institutions. During the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War, non-regular Pakistani volunteers served in the PLO and 50 were taken prisoner during the Siege of Beirut.
The relationship between Pakistan and Israel continued to be ridden with hostilities following these direct engagements, and when Mossad failed to stop Pakistan's nuclear weapons program from making major developments, a plan to bomb Pakistani nuclear facilities in a similar fashion to Operation Opera was authorized by Israel. The Israelis made contact with India in an effort to gain support and secure a launching point for Israel's aircraft, but did not get the response that was expected. India refused to allow Israeli aircraft to station on its soil whereas Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency had discovered the plan and prepared retaliatory measures to bomb strategic sites in Israel. India did not offer its support which thwarted any plans of the destruction of Pakistan's nuclear program, which Israel had hoped to carry out in a joint Indian-Israeli operation to avoid taking full blame.
According to Time Magazine, French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy said that Daniel Pearl, an American-Israeli journalist, was assassinated by elements with backing from Pakistan's ISI over his alleged role in attempting to gather information linking a continued relationship between the ISI and the Taliban. According to other reports from BBC and Time, Pakistani militants murdered him because of their belief that Pearl was an Israeli Mossad agent who had infiltrated Pakistan under the cover of being an American journalist.
Pakistan's religiously-oriented political parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami and militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba fiercely oppose any relationship with Israel, and have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel due to its standing as an alleged sworn enemy of Pakistan. Currently, as Pakistan refuses to recognize Israel until a peaceful solution is reached with Palestine, all Pakistani citizens are unable to travel to Israel. Pakistani passports bear an inscription outlining the invalidity of the passport in regards to Israel.

Israeli attitudes towards Pakistan

In the 1980s, Israel was said to had planned, with or without Indian assistance, a possible attack on Pakistan's nuclear facilities that would be reminiscent of the Israeli attack previously carried out on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Using satellite pictures and intelligence information, Israel reportedly built a full-scale mock-up of the Kahuta nuclear facility in the Negev desert region where Israeli pilots in F-16 and F-15 pilots squadrons practiced mock attacks.
According to The Asian Age, British journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark stated in their book—Deception: Pakistan, the US and the Global Weapons Conspiracy—that the Israeli Air Force was to launch an air attack on Pakistan's nuclear facility in Kahuta sometime during the mid-1980s from an airfield in Jamnagar, Gujarat, India. The book claims that "in March 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed off the Israeli-led operation bringing India, Pakistan and Israel to within a hair's breadth of a nuclear conflagration". Israel's plan met with disapproval from some Indian officials on the grounds that Israel would not face any major consequences after the strike while India would surely face full-scale retaliation—possibly nuclear—from Pakistan for its involvement in the Israeli attack. The plan was discouraged out of the fear of a fourth Indo-Pakistani war starting as a consequence of this operation, and was shelved indefinitely after Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984.
A paper published in the U.S. Air Force Air University system—India Thwarts Israeli Destruction of Pakistan's "Islamic Bomb"—also confirmed this plan's existence. It stated that "Israeli interest in destroying Pakistan's Kahuta reactor to scuttle the 'Islamic bomb' was blocked by India's refusal to grant landing and refuelling rights to Israeli warplanes in 1982." India's refusal to cooperate forced Israel—which on its part wanted the attack to be a joint Indian-Israeli strike to avoid being held solely responsible—to drop the plan.
In October 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled his booking at a dine-in hotel in New York City, due to the fact that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was dining in at the same time to avoid a confrontation over what Sharif stated to be "Israel's naked brutality in Palestine".

Intelligence cooperation

Despite their hostilities, both countries are reported to have directorates to deal with each other at an intelligence level. The history of Israeli-Pakistani intelligence cooperation dates back to at least the early 1980s, when Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq directed the ISI to establish contact with Israel's Mossad. Intelligence offices were set up at both countries' embassies in Washington, D.C. where the ISI, MI6, CIA and Mossad ran a decade-long anti-Soviet operation, codenamed Operation Cyclone. During this operation, Israel supplied Soviet-made weaponry to the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet Union's forces after the latter invaded Afghanistan. Pakistan and Israel cooperated very closely during the entirety of the conflict and the Pakistani military—which was covertly engaging Soviet aircraft and providing the mujahideen with funds and weapons—received a generous amount of Israeli armaments and aid.
WikiLeaks, in a disclosed United States diplomatic cable revealed that around early 2008, Pakistan's ISI had secretly passed on vital intelligence and data to Mossad. The ISI had intercepted information alluding to a possible major attack by terrorists in Mumbai that Israeli civilians may be targeted in. This turned out to be a valid report as on 26 November 2008, the notorious Mumbai terrorist attacks were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba which had, among other targets, attacked a Jewish centre—the Nariman House). Following these attacks, It was reported that Pakistani Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha was in direct contact with Israel's Mossad.
During the Cold War, Israel was a part of the United States-led Western Bloc to which non-aligned Pakistan was allied, whereas non-aligned India was allied to the Soviet Union-led Eastern Bloc. Consequently, India supported the Soviets in Afghanistan and the pro-Soviet Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah. American-allied Pakistan and Israel strongly opposed the Soviet invasion, and Israel and the United States ran arms and funds to and through Pakistan in support of the Afghan mujahideen. Israel had captured the Soviet armaments from Palestinian and other Arab groups from previous conflicts.

Normalization of ties

Diplomatic

Some Israeli leaders believe that diplomatic relations with Pakistan should be established as the latter could possibly serve as a bridge or mediator between Israel and the Muslim world, including the Arab nations. Although the governments of Israel and Pakistan do not officially have diplomatic relations with each other, there have been a number of instances of major and close cooperation and contact between the two states. According to the Pakistani news outlet Daily Jang, there are continuous reports that many top Pakistani leaders and representatives have visited Israel. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has openly spoken for the immediate pursuit of close diplomatic relations with Israel as soon as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reaches a solution. He expressed that Pakistan will full-heartedly recognize Israel and come forward for open relations when a two-state solution that gives equal opportunities to the Palestinians and Israelis is achieved and peace is restored. He is the first Pakistani to be interviewed by American-Israeli Haaretz writer Danna Harman in London. In 2016, a Pakistani Ph.D. scholar and writer, Malik Shah Rukh, started the , which campaigns for a diplomatic relationship between the two nations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu, on an official visit to India in 2017, responded to speculations that Israel's engagement in pursuing closer ties with India was to bolster its position against Pakistan, stating "We are not an enemy of Pakistan and Pakistan should not be our enemy either." Following this, in 2018, widespread news had begun to surface about an Israeli passenger aircraft stopping and staying in Pakistan for a day—stirring rumours that Israeli diplomats had made a secretive yet official visit to Pakistan. There have been increased calls in Pakistan for pursuit of relations with Israel in light of what some Pakistanis view as the Arab world's naked abandonment of Pakistan—which had diplomatically, financially and militarily supported the Arabs against Israel during the Arab-Israeli wars—in regards to the Kashmir conflict with India.

Military ties

revealed in 2013 that Israel had exported military technology to Pakistan. It was also reported that Israel sought to purchase British military equipment that would then be exported to Pakistan such as electronic warfare systems and military-grade aircraft parts. Israel and Pakistan both immediately denied the report and called the revelations "misleading". It was unknown why Israel could covertly be exporting military equipment to Pakistan, but speculations were made that could be to bolster Pakistan's fight against insurgents and terrorists who have caused the internal security situation in Pakistan to deteriorate severely.

Sports ties

Despite the India-Pakistan conflict, it is not uncommon for the two nations to participate together in various sports. However, Israel and Pakistan have not participated in any sports together with the exception of a single football match in which they played against each other at the 1960 AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. During the 2002 Wimbledon Open, Israeli tennis player Amir Hadad teamed up with Pakistani tennis player Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi to play in the 3rd round doubles together. The duo would later break news headlines as the first open Israeli-Pakistani partnership anywhere, which was positively received in both Israel and Pakistan alike.
Dan Kiesel, an Israeli Jew with German citizenship, served as the Pakistan national cricket team's trainer and physiotherapist while living in Lahore.
Former Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Khurshid Kasuri supported diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Israel. Tashbih Sayyed was a well-known Pakistani-American scholar who openly expressed his support for Pakistan-Israel relations in many of his columns and writings throughout his journalistic career.

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