Pakistan and Israel have had a curious relationship. Offi­cially, there is none. In Pakistan, not much has been written on this ‘relationship’, beyond the fact that Pakistan does not recognise Israel. This has obscured certain events in which, on the one hand, both the countries found themselves on the same side, and on the other, they could have gone to war against each other, with the possibility of it escalating into becoming a devastating nuclear conflict. 

According to the Indian author PR Kumaraswamy, ‘secrecy’ is maintained by both the countries in this regard. This secrecy enables them to maintain contacts, despite displaying animosity in public towards each other. 

Even before the creation of Pakistan in 1947, its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah was against the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. Yet, almost immediately after Israel’s creation in May 1948, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, sent a telegram to Jinnah, inviting him to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. Jinnah chose not to reply. 

In 2007, the Israeli historian Moshe Yegar wrote that, in the early 1950s, Israel believed that trade relations could be established with Pakistan. Contact between the ambassador of Pakistan in London and representatives of the state of Israel was made.

Despite never formally recognising the state of Israel, Pakistan has had a far more intertwined relationship with the Zionist state than some might think

Then, in 1953, Pakistani foreign minister Zafrullah Khan met Israel’s US ambassador, Abba Eban, in New York. According to Yegar, Zafrullah told Eban that there was widespread support for Palestinians in Pakistan and therefore it would be next to impossible for his country to establish any diplomatic ties with Israel. According to Yegar, Zafrullah also mentioned “pressure from extremists.” 

By this Yegar deduced that Zafrullah meant Islamists. This conclusion is likely incorrect because, till the 1970s, the anti-Israel sentiment in Pakistan was the strongest among leftist groups. For example, the large anti-Israel rallies in Pakistan in 1956 were led by progressive/leftist outfits. Participation of Islamist parties in these was nominal.

There is every likelihood that Zafrullah meant communists. Another likely proof of this is that the very next year (1954), the Communist Party of Pakistan was banned for being ‘anti-state’ and ‘extremist’. 

Even though Zafrullah declined Eban’s offer to establish diplomatic relations, he did foresee the possibility of mutual visits of experts, students and professors. In 1956, however, when Israel attacked Egypt (alongside British and French forces), the Israeli government estimated there were more than 500 Jews still living in Karachi who could be harmed. It asked the UN to put pressure on Pakistan to protect the lives of these Jews and to allow them to travel to Israel.

In 1962, Pakistan declared that Israel was a “thieving country.” During the 1967 Arab-Israel War, the Pakistan Air Force sent a group of Pakistani fighter pilots to bolster the Arab forces. Yet, in 1971, when the former East Pakistan was devastated by a flood, Israel offered to send medical and food supplies. Pakistan politely refused the offer.

Pakistan had established firm relations with the then largest anti-Israel outfit, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) — a secular, left-leaning alliance led by Yasser Arafat. But in 1970, when Jordan’s monarch began to view the PLO bases in his country as a threat to his power, he unleashed the Jordanian military against the Palestinians. One of the prominent trainers in the Jordanian military at the time was a Pakistani brigadier, Ziaul Haq. He was sent to Jordan by the Pakistan military to help Jordan build an effective fighting force.

Thousands of Palestinians were killed by this force. Zia personally coordinated various attacks against the PLO to drive them out of Jordan. Relations between Pakistan and the PLO nosedived. They were eventually repaired by the ZA Bhutto regime (1971-77). In 1974, Bhutto fully recognised the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians. The same year, the Pakistani government agreed to provide military training to the PLO.

In July 1977, Gen Ziaul Haq toppled the Bhutto regime. According to the Israeli author Shlomo Brom in the book Behind The Veil, the Zia dictatorship played a major role in aiding Egypt’s re-entry into the Arab world when Egypt established ties with Israel in 1978 and was briefly boycotted by other Arab countries. 

In 1980, Pakistan became a frontline player in ‘Operation Cyclone’ — a clandestine programme launched by the American CIA to secretly provide weapons to Afghan insurgents in their fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. One of the ways of doing this was to deliver to the Zia regime arms from Israel that were then handed out to the insurgents. The arms that were sent by Israel were mostly those that were captured by Israeli forces from the PLO. 

In his book Charlie Wilson’s War, the American journalist George Crile wrote that the Zia dictatorship worked closely with Israel during the Afghan insurgency, albeit secretly. No wonder then, in 1986, Zia “advised” the PLO to recognise Israel, even though relations between the PLO and Pakistan had greatly deteriorated by then. The PLO detested Zia. 

However, in the 2008 book Deception, noted journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim that, in 1984, India and Israel agreed to jointly attack Pakistan’s nuclear plants. According to Levy and Scott-Clark, India was to provide bases to Israeli fighter planes for this purpose, but the US intervened and “warned” India. To the US, the Zia regime was just too important a partner in the fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan probably already had nuclear weapons by then. Had the planned attack taken place, it could’ve plunged the region (including Israel) into a devastating nuclear conflict. There is every likelihood that Israel too had nuclear weapons.

After Zia’s demise in 1988, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto restored the country’s ties with the PLO. Across the 1990s, Pakistan encouraged talks between the PLO and Israel after the PLO agreed to recognise Israel.

There have been numerous claims (some appearing in Wikileaks documents) that there was frequent exchange of information between Israeli and Pakistani intelligence agencies across the 2000s and 2010s. There were also murmurs that Pakistan was readying itself to follow Saudi Arabia in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

But the recent brutal attacks against unarmed Palestinians by Israel in Gaza have greatly diminished such a possibility. What’s more, the rapid diplomatic breakthroughs achieved in the last few years in talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel, too, have come to a standstill after Israel’s actions in Gaza.

All parties will now have to go back to the drawing board or, for that matter, sit around a whole new one, once the Israeli carnage recedes.

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 17th, 2023