There are some questions in international politics on which silence becomes complicity and neutrality becomes cowardice. Palestine is one of them. For Pakistan, Palestine has never been a fashionable slogan, a seasonal outrage or an issue to be remembered only when Gaza burns on television screens. It has been a matter of principle, law, faith, history and national honour.
Pakistan’s position is clear and it must remain clear. There can be no durable peace in the Middle East without the establishment of an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state on the basis of pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. This is not street rhetoric. This is Pakistan’s stated diplomatic position, rooted in international law, United Nations resolutions and the collective conscience of the Muslim world. The Foreign Office has repeatedly reaffirmed this position, describing a two-state solution as essential to any just and lasting settlement.
Palestine is a mirror. It shows the world the limits of its morality. It exposes the hypocrisy of those capitals that speak endlessly of human rights, democracy and the rules-based order, yet become blind when Palestinian homes are demolished, Palestinian children are buried, and Palestinian land is swallowed by occupation. It also tests Muslim countries, including Pakistan, by asking whether their words can still carry courage when the price of courage rises.
Pakistan must make clear that supporting Palestine is not a gesture of anger, but an affirmation of the international order the world claims to defend.
Pakistan has passed this test more consistently than many others. Governments have changed. Prime ministers have come and gone. Civilian and military rulers have differed on many questions. Political parties have fought bitterly at home. Yet on Palestine, Pakistan has largely spoken in one voice. From the streets of Karachi to the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, from the mosques of Lahore to the seminar rooms of Islamabad, the ordinary Pakistani has understood one simple truth: a nation denied its land cannot be asked to accept permanent humiliation in the name of peace.
Pakistan was created through a political movement that insisted a people had the right to live with dignity, identity and security. How then can Pakistan look away when Palestinians are told that their land, their homes, their mosques, their churches, their olive trees and even their dead can be treated as bargaining chips? A Pakistan that forgets Palestine would not merely betray Gaza. It would betray something inside itself.
The ongoing tragedy in Gaza has again shown that ceasefires may stop bombs for a while, but they do not end injustice. Pakistan welcomed the Gaza ceasefire reached on January 15, 2025, and called for its immediate and full implementation. It hoped the truce would lead to a permanent ceasefire and help scale up humanitarian assistance. That was the correct position. Yet no ceasefire can be considered a substitute for freedom. No humanitarian corridor can replace sovereignty. No reconstruction plan can erase the political question at the heart of the conflict. Palestinians do not need pity wrapped in diplomatic language. They need justice.
Israel’s occupation, settlement expansion and repeated violations of Palestinian rights cannot be normalised through clever public relations or selective Western outrage. Pakistan has recently raised alarm at the United Nations over the systematic annexation of the occupied West Bank, expansion of illegal settlements, demolitions, land seizures and forced displacement of Palestinians. That is not an abstract legal complaint. It is a warning that the map of Palestine is being changed while the world debates vocabulary.
The killing of civilians cannot be condemned in one country and explained away in another. The world cannot claim to defend sovereignty in Europe while treating Palestinian sovereignty as an inconvenience in the Middle East. If international law is law, it must apply in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem as much as anywhere else. If collective security means anything, it cannot mean protecting the powerful from consequences while leaving the weak to negotiate their survival under occupation.
This is why Pakistan’s emerging diplomatic role in the present Middle Eastern crisis matters. As tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran have destabilised the region, Pakistan has not behaved like a state looking for adventure. It has behaved like a state that understands the cost of war. International media has reported how Iran sent its response to a US proposal through Pakistan, underlining Islamabad’s role as a mediator in a dangerous conflict. This may not make Pakistan a superpower, but it does make Pakistan relevant. And relevance, when handled with wisdom, becomes influence.
Pakistan’s value in this crisis lies precisely in the fact that it has not confused mediation with adventurism. It has argued for restraint, dialogue and de-escalation at a time when the region is standing too close to the edge. Even those who may not share Pakistan’s wider worldview have been forced to acknowledge that Islamabad has become one of the few channels through which messages can still move in a dangerously polarised region.
This is why Pakistan’s emerging relevance in regional diplomacy must not remain confined to crisis management between Iran and the United States. It should enlarge Islamabad’s moral and political space to press the Palestinian question with renewed confidence.
This is the moment for Pakistan to stand tall, not with empty noise, but with disciplined confidence. On Palestine, Pakistan’s position is stronger than the position of many countries that lecture others on civilisation. We have no reason to whisper when the issue is Gaza. We have no reason to apologise for supporting Palestinian statehood. We have no reason to dilute our principles to please those who have already diluted their own.
The Muslim world has no shortage of emotion on Palestine. What it lacks is sustained strategy. Too often, emergency meetings produce strong statements and weak outcomes. Pakistan can help change that. It can argue for a permanent diplomatic mechanism within the OIC that does not wake up only after another massacre. It can coordinate with Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and the UAE to keep pressure alive in international institutions. It can work with China and other global actors to ensure that Palestine is not buried under the rubble of other wars.
Pakistan’s refusal to recognise Israel in the absence of a just settlement is part of this moral and diplomatic framework. The Foreign Office has previously stated that there is no change in Pakistan’s principled position and that Pakistan supports a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. This policy tells the world that Pakistan’s principles are not for sale in the marketplace of temporary convenience.
This policy is not anti-West. It is not anti-any people. It is pro-law, pro-justice and pro-human dignity. Pakistan must frame its position in these terms. It must make clear that supporting Palestine is not a gesture of anger, but an affirmation of the international order the world claims to defend. If the world wants a rules-based system, then Palestine is the test case. If the world fails Palestine, then the phrase “rules-based order” becomes nothing more than diplomatic decoration.
The writer is a freelance columnist