Is Imran Ready?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
There’s the whiff of a major tabdeeli (change) in the air; there are many a straw in the wind suggesting a radical, bold, change of direction in the realm of foreign policy in Imran Khan’s Naya Pakistan. And why not?
If the PM can open a portal for the people of Pakistan to take their grievances and woes about public office holders and state functionaries directly to him, he has every right to open a new port in Pakistan’s foreign relations.
Kaptan has been making waves from day one of stepping into the coveted title of Pakistan’s new leader and architect of his putative ‘New Pakistan.’ From cracking down hard on Pakistan’s notorious robber-barons to convincing our Saudi ‘brethren’ that now is the best time to show their concern for our welfare—their timely input of $ 3 billion into our foreign exchange reserves plus more than $ 3billion of oil on one-year deferred payment—Imran is leaving none in doubt that he’s Pakistan’s ma
But was Kaptan, and his people, ready for the bolt from the blue hitting his government quick on the heels of his spectacular success with the Saudis?
Pakistan is agog, excited and nervous beyond words, over the macabre episode of an Israeli executive jet landing in Islamabad, last week, and staying there for no less than ten long hours. Why did the Israeli jet have to land in Islamabad? Who was on board the mysterious aircraft? What was the mission of whoever was the passenger on board?
These and other pesky questions of detail are conspicuous by their absence from the cryptic narrative of the mystery plane’s alleged landing and halt in Islamabad.
Equally intriguing is that the author of the story is a prominent Israeli journalist: Avi Scharf, editor of Israel’s leading daily Haaretz.
In its English edition of October 25, Avi broke the news that an executive Israeli jet—registered in the English Isle of Man but serving charter flights out of Tel Aviv airport—made a landing on Islamabad airport and stayed there for 10 hours. What did it do there in those ten hours? Avi didn’t delve into such nettlesome questions.
Avi, in a subsequent Tweet, backtracked on his story by saying the plane had suddenly dropped to 20,000 feet
from its erstwhile flight at 40,000 feet in the vicinity of Islamabad airport. Which could technically be because it was going to land at Islamabad. But there was no proof that it actually landed at the airport. He was fudging, no doubt.
However, the damage had been done by his earlier assertion of the Israeli plane sitting for ten long hours at Islamabad airport.
Imran’s political opponents—cornered, down beaten and humiliated because of having been caught with their fingers into the corruption jar—saw a god-send opportunity to corner him. Flirting with Israel was touted by these defeated horses as nothing less than sacrilege. They started crying wolf.
Imran’s spokesmen—Fawad Chaudhry to Shah Mehmood Qureshi et al.—flatly denied that an Israeli aircraft had made a landing in Islamabad. They were right, technically. Avi himself supported their argument. After taking off from Tel Aviv, the plane had made a brief stopover at Amman, Jordan. So, according to aviation flight log, its provenance was Amman when it landed, if it landed, at Islamabad.
While Imran’s cussed-minded opponents and detractors are too vindictive to make any allowance for technical
fine points, for an average Pakistani these technicalities are all Greek and Latin.
The problem, as far as Israel may be concerned, is all of sentiments; an issue of deep emotions.
Israel has been a pariah to the Pakistanis from the moment of its birth. Allergy to Israel, in fact, goes back to the days before either Pakistan or Israel were born.
Students of the great Pakistan freedom movement know this so well—but many Pakistanis may not—that on March 23, 1940, when the Pakistan Resolution was adopted in Lahore under the banner of Muslim League, the same platform also adopted a resolution calling on the then imperialist power, Britain, which also had Palestine under its mandate, to ensure that the Palestinians had their own state.
The hapless Palestinians have been perennial quarries of Israel ever since its birth as a Jewish state. Their plight has multiplied in the half century since Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
So, to an average Pakistani there can be no room for any change of heart as far as keeping Israel’s pariah status intact until it relents on the rights of the Palestinians usurped by its Zionist rulers.
However, state policies need not be held hostage to emotions or sentimentalism.
Arab states, which should be more accommodating and sympathetic to Palestinian rights have been lining up to court Israel, for whatever reason. Egypt sued for peace with Israel way back in 1978. Jordan followed suit a few years later. Israeli presence has been markedly on an upswing in the Arab countries, particularly those of the Gulf whose rich potentates seem eager to get on the right side of Israel.
Other than its traditionally emotive commitment to the Palestinian rights—savagely mauled by the Zionist entity—the Pakistanis should have no logical reason to shun Israel. Getting Israel on its side makes all the sense to a Pakistani foreign policy guru in the hope of cutting into the budding Israeli-Indian camaraderie. Modi and Netanyahu are becoming buddies, which should be a cause of concern to Pakistan.
Pragmatism says Pakistan needs a course correction on relations—or absence of them—with Israel.
Imran, if at all he condescends to bite the bullet and start a process with Israel—will not be the first Pakistani leader to commit this ‘sacrilege.’ Musharraf, ever an adventurer and soldier-of-fortune, tried his hand at this initiative. His
Foreign Minister Khurshid Qasuri met with his counterpart, Silvan Shalom, in 2005 in Istanbul. Informal contacts between the two states have been many, though resulting in no melting of the ice.
The plane mystery gathered mass because it seemed to sit in sync with Benjamin Netanyahu’s hush-hush visit to Oman a day later.
Netanyahu himself broke the story in a Tweet only after he’d returned home from Muscat, where he was closeted with the Arab world’s longest-reigning monarch, Sultan Qaboos. The Omani govt. made a clean breast of that meeting only after Netanyahu spilled the beans.
Pundits in Pakistan find it easy to put two and two together.
Imran was loaded with gifts by his Saudi friends to bail Pakistan out of a tight corner in its moribund and deeply hemorrhaging economy. Surely, in this day and age, the question gains relevance why the Saudis would show such munificence to Imran without attaching strings to their dole.
The Saudi strongman—or monarch, de facto—heir apparent MBS (Mohammad Bin Salman) has left no one in doubt in the outside world that he cares two hoots for the Palestinians while he’d go the extra mile to please his
American friends. His friendship with Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner, is no secret. And there’s no fig-leaf on Kushner’s anointment in the Trump administration as Israel’s point man.
Trump, MBS and Netanyahu share an agenda to isolate Iran, their common enemy. Nothing would delight them more to have Pakistan in their corner against Iran.
The Iranian question should factor prominently in any new calculus on Israel on Imran’s watch. Any policy initiative that drives a wedge between Pakistan and Iran should be a no-go for Imran and must be shunned. There’s absolutely no earthly reason for Pakistan to become a pawn in the high-stakes tussle between Saudi Arabia—backed by Israel and US—and Iran.
Carrying equal weight and gravitas for Pakistan and Pakistanis is the future of the Palestinians. Their rights must not be bartered away in any process of normalization with Israel. Going back on our historic commitment to the Palestinians would be tantamount to forswearing our commitment to the idea of Pakistan.
Imran has a delicate choice and a tough task ahead for him. It’s a Catch-22. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com (The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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