Israel–Pakistan relations
The State of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan have never had formal diplomatic relations. In 1947, Pakistan voted against the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, and currently does not recognize Israeli sovereignty. Despite the Pakistani position on the Arab–Israeli conflict, there have been multiple instances of the two countries closely cooperating during events such as the Soviet–Afghan War and the Black September conflict. With regard to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Pakistan supports the Palestinian Arabs and endorses the two-state solution. The Pakistani government has maintained that it will not pursue a normalized relationship with Israel until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as the Palestinians' capital city. Nevertheless, with Turkey serving as their middle ground, Israel and Pakistan have used their embassies and consulates-general in the cities of Ankara and Istanbul to communicate and exchange necessary information with each other. In 2010, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, following up on reports received in Washington, had gone through Ankara to pass on newly discovered information to Israel's Mossad about an upcoming terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, where a Jewish cultural centre was listed as a major target; this information first surfaced on WikiLeaks one year after the 2008 Mumbai attacks were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terrorist organization.
Israel |
Pakistan |
---|
In 2018, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while on an official visit to India, stated that Israel is not an enemy of Pakistan and that Pakistan "should not behave like an enemy" towards Israel.
Following the success of the Abraham Accords in 2020, erstwhile Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan disclosed that the United States and "at least one other country" had been mounting increased diplomatic pressure on his administration to normalize ties with Israel. He did not reveal the countries' names and did not say whether or not they were from the Muslim world, but explained that "the pressure is because of Israel's deep impact in the United States," and that "Israel’s lobby is the most powerful, and that’s why America’s whole Middle East policy is controlled by Israel." Khan's administration later reiterated that Pakistan would not establish any official bilateral relationship with Israel until a "viable, independent, and contiguous" country is created for and accepted by the Palestinians.