Washington, June 6 (IANS) Pakistan’s leadership continues to project contrasting narratives on the Palestine issue, offering emotive solidarity at home while pursuing discreet strategic calculations on the international stage. That is not “realpolitik” but a pattern of “institutionalised deception”, with the Pakistani public paying the price, a report mentioned.
“For years, Pakistan has worn its solidarity with Palestine like armour. Politicians deliver impassioned speeches. Parliament passes resolutions. Official statements routinely condemn Israel as an illegitimate occupier. The message, repeated until it has become reflexive, is clear: Pakistan will never normalise relations with Israel until Palestinians have a state of their own. But follow the quieter corridors of Pakistani diplomacy, and a starkly different picture emerges,” Michael Arizanti, writer and expert on Middle East affairs, wrote in US-based Medium.
“Since the Abraham Accords of 2020 — when the UAE, Bahrain and others formalised ties with Israel — something has been shifting beneath the surface. Not openly. Not honestly. In the way Pakistan’s establishment has always preferred to handle inconvenient business: through back channels, managed media access, and informal contacts, while the public rhetoric stays defiantly unchanged,” he noted.
According to the expert, Pakistan’s establishment has long followed a familiar playbook: tolerating sensitive initiatives when they serve strategic interests, only to publicly distance itself from them when domestic pressure mounts.
Arizanti highlighted that on October 8 last year, Pakistan reportedly joined several Muslim and Arab nations in backing a Gaza peace proposal associated with the US President Donald Trump administration. Yet, within days, he said that Pakistani authorities were dispersing pro-Palestine demonstrations in Lahore and Karachi, leaving students and activists confronting a state that was simultaneously supporting a diplomatic framework which they opposed.
“For ordinary Pakistanis, this was not an abstract policy inconsistency. It was a betrayal. Palestine is not a bargaining chip in the Pakistani public imagination — it is a moral absolute, felt across class, ideology, and generation. Watching the state suppress protest while pursuing private accommodation with Washington and Israeli-linked networks was, for many, a radicalising experience in distrust,” Arizanti detailed.
“The establishment miscalculated. Populations can be managed by rhetoric only as long as the gap between rhetoric and reality stays invisible. October 2025 made it visible,” he added.
Arizanti argued that while the Pakistani public is presented with one version of events, foreign partners — in Washington, in Tel Aviv, in Western lobbying circles — encounter a different reality. The truth, he said, lies somewhere in the widening gap between the two narratives.
“Until Pakistan’s leadership is willing to close that gap openly, the credibility of its foreign policy commitments — on Palestine and everything else — will continue to erode. Not just abroad. At home, where it matters most,” he stressed.
–IANS
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