For nearly 80 years following Pakistan’s 1947 founding, a defining line has been printed on every Pakistani passport: “Valid for all countries of the world except Israel.” This is far more than a bureaucratic footnote; it is the physical embodiment of one of Pakistan’s most enduring and consensus-driven foreign policy pillars: the total non-recognition of the Israeli state.
Rooted in widespread religious solidarity with Palestinians, reinforced by a politically active media landscape, and preserved by successive governments that have refused to challenge popular opinion, this position has held unshaken through decades of regional and global upheaval. Pakistan’s policy has consistently tied any potential recognition of Israel to the creation of an independent Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its sovereign capital – a red line that has remained consistent regardless of which party or military leadership holds power in Islamabad.
Now, that decades-long national consensus is facing an unprecedented test of external pressure, sparked by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping new proposal that ties a potential post-war peace deal with Iran to a mandatory, broad expansion of the Abraham Accords.
First negotiated during Trump’s first term in 2020, the Abraham Accords are a set of bilateral normalization agreements between Israel and multiple Muslim-majority nations, starting with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with Morocco and Sudan joining the framework shortly after. In a recent Truth Social post, released following closed-door talks with Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump called for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other regional states to join the accords simultaneously to cement a historic regional settlement. “It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit,” Trump wrote.
Islamabad rejected the demand within days. Speaking to a local Pakistani television channel on May 26, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif made clear that Pakistan would never join any agreement that contradicted its core ideological commitments. “Right now, no initiative in this regard has been taken by us, nor has anyone asked us,” Asif added, echoing earlier official statements that reaffirmed Pakistan’s longstanding stance. Just months prior, in January 2024, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi reiterated that Pakistan would not join the Abraham Accords, framing the issue solely through the lens of Palestinian statehood: “We have no issue with which countries choose to join or not join the accords. We view the matter through the prism of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.”
The public demand has reignited a long-simmering periodic debate in Pakistan that has rarely gained mainstream political traction: could Islamabad ever reverse its position on recognizing Israel, and what conditions would force such a shift?
Analysts broadly agree that Pakistan’s stance is shaped not only by diplomatic principle, but by overwhelming domestic political realities that make normalization extremely high-risk for any sitting government. Unlike the Gulf monarchies that joined the initial Abraham Accords, Pakistan operates a competitive political system where public opinion, Islamist opposition parties, armed factions, parliament, civil society, and a fiercely independent media all exert heavy influence over foreign policy outcomes, explained Muhammad Israr Madani, head of the Islamabad-based International Research Council for Religious Affairs. A senior anonymous Pakistani foreign ministry official echoed this assessment, noting that “the political costs of normalisation are ‘significantly higher in Pakistan than in most Arab states. Any government perceived as abandoning the Palestinian cause would face immediate resistance from religious parties and significant sections of the public.’”
The issue is further complicated by Pakistan’s decades-long stance on the Kashmir dispute, where Pakistani policymakers have long drawn parallels between the Kashmiri and Palestinian struggles, framing both as fights for self-determination enshrined in international law. Many analysts warn that recognizing Israel without a final Palestinian settlement would open Islamabad to accusations of diplomatic hypocrisy and undermine a core pillar of its regional foreign policy narrative.
Trump’s latest proposal goes further than prior U.S. efforts by tying any future progress on Iran diplomacy to expanded normalization, a demand that has been met with deep skepticism across much of the Muslim world, amplified by widespread public anger over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The Abraham Accords have remained a central pillar of Trump’s Middle East policy vision, and his closest congressional ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, has publicly backed the push, warning that refusal to join the framework would bring “severe repercussions” for bilateral relationships with the U.S. and would go down as a “major miscalculation” in history.
The debate comes at a particularly sensitive juncture for U.S.-Pakistan relations, as Islamabad has sought to position itself as a neutral diplomatic bridge between Washington and Tehran, while maintaining close strategic ties to both Saudi Arabia and China. Graham and other U.S. lawmakers have openly questioned whether Pakistan can credibly serve as a neutral mediator while maintaining its hardline opposition to Israeli recognition.
For Pakistani policymakers, however, joining the accords would carry severe strategic and domestic risks: recognition could destabilize Pakistan’s longstanding close ties to Iran, spark mass domestic unrest, and unravel the carefully balanced regional neutrality Islamabad has cultivated for decades. “The Abraham Accords cannot be sustained through coercion or transactional pressure,” explained Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran and the UAE. Durrani argued that lasting regional peace requires “credible diplomacy, mutual security guarantees, de-escalation with Iran, and meaningful progress on Palestine” rather than external pressure tactics that shift responsibility onto regional governments.
Veteran Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir echoed this take, suggesting on social media platform X that Trump’s recent remarks stem from frustration over Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s prior refusal to join the accords. Even so, many analysts caution against assuming that U.S. pressure will force a policy shift, noting that Pakistan has a long history of maintaining independent stances on core strategic issues – from its relationship with China to its approach to the Afghanistan war – even when facing intense pressure from Washington. A senior Islamabad-based security official noted that Trump himself acknowledged that some countries could ultimately opt out of the expanded framework, and Pakistan is widely seen as the most likely holdout.
While Pakistan insists all its foreign policy decisions are rooted in national sovereignty, most analysts agree that any future shift on the Israel issue will be heavily determined by Saudi Arabia’s position. As the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites and one of Pakistan’s closest and most consequential strategic partners, Riyadh’s policy choices carry enormous political and religious weight in Islamabad. The bilateral relationship extends far beyond diplomacy: Saudi Arabia has long provided Pakistan with critical financial support, large-scale foreign investment, employment for millions of Pakistani migrant workers, and deep defense cooperation. The two countries further cemented this partnership with a mutual security pact signed in September 2023, which stipulates that an attack on one will be considered an attack on the other – a commitment that underscores the depth of their strategic alignment.
Against this backdrop, most observers believe Riyadh’s approach to Israel will shape any future debate over normalization in Pakistan. Michael Kugelman, senior fellow for South Asia at The Atlantic Council, recently noted that if Saudi Arabia were to join the Abraham Accords, Pakistan would face significant pressure to revisit its stance. “But given where public sentiment stands, a Pakistani government that joins them would risk committing political suicide,” Kugelman warned in a post on X. Even so, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stated that any normalization with Israel must be tied to a clear pathway to a two-state solution, a position that aligns almost perfectly with Pakistan’s existing stance.
If normalization was already politically out of reach for most Muslim-majority states before October 2023, the outbreak of the Gaza war has made the prospect even more remote. Prior to the Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent military response, the U.S. was actively courting Saudi Arabia to join the accords, with many analysts predicting a breakthrough was increasingly likely. A Saudi decision to normalize would have placed enormous pressure on Pakistan to revise its own position, given Riyadh’s influence across the Muslim world. But that prospect was derailed entirely by the war, which froze Saudi-Israeli normalization talks indefinitely.
As civilian casualties have mounted and footage of widespread destruction in Gaza has dominated media coverage across the Muslim world, public support for any engagement with Israel has plummeted. In Pakistan, the war has further hardened already firm public attitudes: a 2023 Gallup Pakistan survey found that 91 percent of Pakistanis sympathize with Palestinians in Gaza, while just 2 percent express sympathy for Israel. Religious groups, all mainstream political parties, and civil society organizations have framed the Gaza war as proof that normalization without a viable independent Palestinian state is both morally indefensible and politically unsustainable.
For the foreseeable future, Pakistan shows no sign of shifting its 77-year-old stance. While shifting regional dynamics and periodic external pressure have sparked repeated speculation about an impending policy change, Pakistan’s longstanding red line on Israeli recognition remains firmly in place.
