Haroon Gul
Prime Minister Imran Khan, in an interview with a local TV channel on Tuesday, August 18, 2020 said that his country will not recognize Israel until there is a Palestinian state acceptable to the Palestinians. He further added, “Whatever any country does, our position is very clear. And our position was made clear by [Pakistan’s founder] Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah … in 1948: that we cannot ever accept Israel as long as Palestinians are not given their rights and there is no just settlement.”
Pakistan and Israel are the two nations in the world community that were founded on the basis of religious ideologies. While Pakistan was demanded on the idea of the Two Nation Theory, the Israelis demanded a homeland for the Jewish people. While both have some things in common, there are no diplomatic ties between the two states and they use their embassies in Istanbul to exchange information. The Pakistani passport is the only passport in the world that says you can travel anywhere except Israel. The refusal to recognize Israel by Pakistan in the past was probably a gesture to win the hearts of the Arabs who had no diplomatic ties with Israel then.
Interestingly, Pakistanis use many Israeli products without any restriction or hesitation. For example, Nestle, the largest food company of the world which owns 53.8% shares of leading Israeli food manufacturer, is the most popular company in Pakistan. Nestle products are common in almost every Pakistani household.
Fiverr, a freelance website used mostly by Pakistanis and Indians alike, is a notable company in Israel providing many jobs to the youth in Pakistan. Freelance work done by Pakistani graphic designers, video editors, creative writers, and content creators gets paid really well. This supplemental in many cases is more than their average salary in Pakistan. Another famous website Wix.com commonly used by Pakistanis is also an Israeli software company that helps users create websites with the use of drag and drop tools with HTML 5.
The question is that when other Muslim countries have maintained foreign relations with Israel, why not Pakistan? For example, Israel maintains full diplomatic relations with two of its Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, after signing peace treaties in 1979 and 1994 respectively. Recently, a peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was announced on 13 August 2020, ending decades of non-recognition from UAE.
I personally believe that having better diplomatic relations with Israel may be fruitful especially because Pakistan can learn a lot from them in terms of science and cyber security. The government of Pakistan should consider the fact that even Saudi Arabia had to remove the ban of Israeli goods and services due to their application to the World Trade Organization. Turkey was the first Muslim majority country to recognize Israel and gave importance to military, strategic and diplomatic cooperation while also playing its humanitarian part in helping Palestine. It’s high time Pakistan moves forward and keeps a diplomatic relation with the world to grow while supporting causes for any injustice whether it be in Palestine or any part of the world.
