Two sovereign countries have the right to build a relationship in the way that suites them. Israel has spoken. It has allowed its citizens to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) either to perform their religious rituals or conduct business deals. The Kingdom has stayed quiet, signaling tacit approval of the development; modalities for which must have been talked through in detail. Backdoor diplomacy has long been at work to achieve this goal. One way to look at it is through the lens of Iran. On the face of it, both the Kingdom and Israel have Iran as a common enemy, which supposedly brings them together. But it is not just as simple as that. The Kingdom is not the first country in the Middle East with which Israel is going to have formal ties. It has official relations with Egypt and Jordan too. And it is not mandatory that a partner with Israel cannot share a table with Iran. We have Turkey’s case in hand. Before its Islamic revolution, the only ally Iran had in the region was Israel. They both had joint military ventures and Iran was then, not for nothing, known as Policeman of the Gulf. For all its religious posturing, nationalism colours Iran’s profile. It still houses the highest number of Jews for a single country in the Middle East because they are born Iranians.
The region is known to host some very promising economies. It is hard to point out if the UAE is fetching more business or the Kingdom. Then we have Doha, the city that is going to match Dubai in the near future. The Kingdom and Israel are logically more interested in business than religious tourism or UN obligations to protect human rights. In the Trump era, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that business and trade define international relations mainly, if not solely. The only lesson that this development has for Pakistan, therefore, is that it needs to focus on how to lift its own big number of people out of poverty. The sooner we do away with misplaced notions of friendships with distant countries the better. *