By Prasad Nallapati
After the US, it is now the Israel’s turn to get tossed around as Pakistan’s political parties blame each other of getting closer to the Jewish state. The deposed Prime Minister Imran Khan had so far whipped up a frenzy against the Biden administration, charging it of pulling a regime change in his country. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), leaders are now mounting a charge against Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of secretly meeting the Chief of the Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency of Israel, in Qatar’s capital, Doha. Sharif was on a two-day (August 23-24) visit to the Gulf nation seeking financial assistance for his beleaguered state.
The PTI leader and former human rights minister, Dr Shireen Mazari, sought an official response from the Foreign Office on reports of the secret meeting between the Prime Minister or his senior officials with Israel’s spy agency. She alleged that the Prime Minister’s jet and Mossad special missions’ plane were parked next to each other for nine hours in secluded place of the Doha airport thus making it easier for such a meeting in one of the planes while keeping the prying eyes away.
Major (Retd) Adil Raja, who took voluntary retirement from Pakistan’s army, tweeted further details of the secret meeting in Doha. He now lives in exile claiming to have been harassed and kidnapped by the army for exposing its human rights violations. He had earlier opposed the Army’s actions that brought down the Imran Khan’s PTI government.
Quoting reliable sources, he stated that Sharif, along with Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa and Qatari Communications Minister, met with the chief of the Mossad in a safe house in Doha. The Prime Minister allegedly promised to recognize Israel if his ruling coalition, Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), wins the next elections.
Earlier in May this year, an American-Pakistani delegation, which includes Rawalpindi’s protégé journalist Ahmed Quraishi, visited Israel creating a political storm in the country. The PTI leader Shireen Mazari tweeted about the visit threatening to expose the Army’s involvement in it. Countering Dr. Mazari’s criticism, Quraishi pointed out her double standards saying that she had not made any comment when her former boss, the then Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri held the first official meeting with an Israeli minister in Turkey in 2005.
Prior to that in June last year, reports surfaced in Israeli press about a visit of the advisers of the Imran Khan’s government to Jerusalem. It was reported by the newspaper, Israel Hayom, quoting sources in Islamabad. The advisers, Moeed Yusuf and Zulfi Bukhari, denied it, but the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto commented that there is something fishy about the officials’ visit to Israel.
Between the charges, countercharges and denials, what is then the truth?
Ayesha Siddiqa, a research associate at the University of London and well-known author of the book, `Military Inc: inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’, writes, “There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the Pakistan Army was keen to go ahead…” on establishing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. She said that senior officials of the armed forces of Pakistan and Israel are in contact with each other.
The appointment of Gen. Bajwa’s close confidante, Lt. Gen. (Retd) Bilal Akbar, as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in January last year, replacing a career diplomat, was said to be part of the Army’s direct coordination with Riyadh on promoting relations with Israel. Pakistan cannot do it without a clear signal from Saudi Arabia.
Siddiqa further states that some of the journalists and propagandists closely associated with the armed forces, such as Kamran Khan, Mubashar Luqman and Ahmed Qureshi, spoke in favour of recognizing Israel, which could never have happened without instructions from the Army. “That Rawalpindi even got a rabid religious cleric like Maulana Sherani (JUIF) to give a statement in support of the Israel idea indicates that the State was making its preparations in that direction.”
However, Prime Minister Imran Khan was believed to have refused to go with the Army’s plans and also got his Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to oppose the idea as that would be politically very expensive for the PTI leader.
Notwithstanding the official position of not recognizing the Jewish state until an independent Palestine state is established and Saudi-led Arab countries take the first step, Pakistan has long maintained unofficial contacts with Israel. Pakistan’s business delegations have been visiting Israel since at least 1994. The meeting between Foreign Minister Kasuri and Israeli officials in 2005 facilitated waiving of import license requirement for Israeli businessmen trading with Pakistan.
Both see it as `win-win’
The Abraham accords between Israel and the Gulf states of the UAE and Bahrain, sponsored by the Trump administration in August 2020, gave a fresh impetus for Pakistan and Israel to follow suit. Pakistan sees Israel and Jewish lobby in the US as the right path to regain its lost influence in Washington, DC’s `Beltway’.
Pakistan’s efforts to get closer to the US through a peace deal with the Taliban or facilitation of the killing of the Al Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan a month ago have given only temporary benefits but not a durable reproachment that Islamabad had hoped for.
Despite its strategic relations with China, which both sides claim to have no limits, Pakistan knows that it can come out of its current economic and political abyss only with the help of the US. It may be either the IMF loans or getting out of the `grey’ list of the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, The Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Pakistan also hopes that its new equations with Israel could at least partly balance the latter’s strategic ties with India and finally the Jewish state can be an important source of military technology and arms which Pakistan is unable to get from the US any longer.
For Israel, its recognition by leading Islamic states like Pakistan is a much sought-after prize. The changing geopolitics in the Gulf region and its new youthful leadership made it possible for the Jewish state to realize its dream of getting wider acceptability in the Islamic world. The bonus could be that a close security relationship with Pakistan opens up a long cherished `front’ to reach its staunch adversary, Islamic Republic of Iran. Israel has lacked the depth to reach Iranian territory to bomb its nuclear installations which it has always threatened to do. Pakistan has provided such facility to the US whenever it needed either for Iran or Afghanistan, though at a negotiated price. Israel too can hope to get a similar benefit if the price is right.
It is, however, the domestic political cost that has been preventing the Army establishment to push it through hard. It wants to fire the gun over the shoulders of civilian governments as the latter are expendable in case of public wrath, while shielding the military. Civilian governments are aware of the dangers involved and have so far resisted the military pressures even though they were beneficiaries of the latter’s political manipulation. We need to wait until next elections to see if Pakistan Army can deliver on recognizing Israel.
(Prasad Nallapati is currently President of the Hyderabad-based think-tank, “Deccan Council for Strategic Initiatives” and former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India)
