Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has declared Islamabad willing to send troops to the new Gaza international force as long as disarming Hamas is not its task. On the surface, this sounds principled as Pakistan backs a ceasefire and Palestinian self-determination. Trying to explain the logic behind joining a US-driven plan that many Palestinians and observers at home view as one-sided is a different story altogether.
The UN-approved 20-point Gaza plan empowers a Board of Peace (to be chaired by the US President) and an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) that will de facto enforce borders and disarm Gaza. The resolution explicitly tasks the ISF to “demilitarise the Gaza Strip” and permanently decommission weapons of non-state groups, i.e. Hamas.
The means in this plan have raised alarms. Pakistan’s own UN envoy, Asim Iftikhar Ahmed, thanked Washington for the resolution but warned that key aspects remain undefined, including Gaza’s governance. Without such clarity, and more critically, without any debate in the parliament, any troop deployment is premature. Indeed, Islamabad claims its purpose would be peacekeeping, not peace enforcement. This consistency with Pakistani law and policy is welcome. But the bigger issue is whether the entire international scheme makes sense.
Critics note the resolution was crafted without Palestinian consent and contains no real path to statehood. As UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned, the proposal risks “entrenching external control over Gaza’s governance, borders, security and reconstruction,” betraying those it claims to help. Hamas has rejected the plan, insisting that any force, if deployed at all, must remain strictly at the borders under UN supervision and coordinate only with legitimate Palestinian institutions. Disarmament should come after the occupation ends, as a matter for the Palestinians themselves.
For Pakistan, joining a force seen by Palestinians as a proxy of Israeli-American policy poses a dilemma. On the one hand, Pakistan’s diplomatic statements have reaffirmed Palestinian rights. On the other hand, Washington and regional partners, including Saudi Arabia and some Gulf states, want Islamabad’s participation to lend the plan Muslim-majority legitimacy.
We need not go further than recent news cycles when an offhand remark suggesting Pakistani troops would disarm Hamas sparked such outrage that Defence Minister Khawaja Asif quickly disowned it as “entirely inappropriate” and beyond Pakistan’s mandate. After all, this is a country where the passport forbids travel to Israel and where any perception of cooperation with Israeli forces can ignite public backlash and erode trust.
Pakistan’s peacekeeping pedigree is strong, as its troops have served in dozens of UN missions and, as of 2025, over 2,600 Pakistanis were in global UN operations (making Pakistan one of the top contributors). But peacekeeping means supporting UN mandates to protect civilians and uphold international law. Nothing else. Nothing more.
The crisis in Gaza is above all about Palestinian agency. Their leadership must be at the centre of Gaza’s rehabilitation. Gaza’s people have endured a devastating two-year war that left nearly 70,000 dead and 1.9 million (about 90% of the population) displaced. No matter how well-intentioned, any force that enters Gaza without clear Palestinian consent risks becoming just another front in the conflict. *