Behind Musharraf's overtures to India - CIR 22 September 2005

Knowing full well that the highway to Washington passes through Tel Aviv, the US-backed Musharraf government in Pakistan seems determined to go down a path that successive civilian governments in Islamabad have feared to tread as a matter of principle: recognition of the Jewish state of Israel. But there is more to the move than simply courting favour with Washington.

Israel and Pakistan do not have diplomatic ties. One was created as a state for Jews and champions Jewish causes around the world. The other was created as a state for Muslims of the subcontinent and has actively supported Palestinians and other Arabs. The absence of diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Israel is based on the fact that the Palestine-Israeli conflict remains unresolved.

However, the situation began to change when Pakistan was made to join the US-led war on terror following the 11 September 2001 attacks. Soon after joining the coalition, General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president and the fourth military ruler of the country, begun urging his people to debate and discuss the possibility of having some relations with Israel.

In June 2003, after receiving a $3bn economic package from President Bush at the Camp David presidential resort, the Pakistani leader went one step further and said that Islamabad should consider recognizing Israel. He argued that given that Egypt, the intellectual capital of the Arab world, and Jordan, where the Palestinians comprise a majority of the population, have had formal peace agreements and diplomatic ties with the Jewish state for quite a while, it makes no sense for Pakistan to sit on the fence.

Since the Camp David accords, he said, the Arab world has been interacting with Israel on the diplomatic front and has begun seeking a negotiated settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. "Instead of staying out of this process, Pakistan should play an active role in the Middle East peace process", he added.

Out of this came the 1 September 2005 historic meeting of the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel in Istanbul - the first formal contact between the two governments. The Istanbul meeting was not a one-on-one affair between the two foreign ministers but a delegation-level interaction. Tel Aviv is now on Islamabad’s radar officially and openly.

The foreign ministers’ meeting was followed by General Musharraf’s 18 September address to the American Jewish Congress in New York, where he declared: "Pakistan has no direct conflict or dispute with Israel. We pose no threat to Israel’s security and we trust that Israel poses no threat to Pakistan’s national security". Musharraf then indicated that if Israel were to give to the Palestinians what is their right, then Pakistan and Israel could engage fruitfully and to mutual advantage.

The communication that began in Istanbul is set to unfold further to meet all the ends to which Pakistan has formulated its latest Israel policy. As things stand, it is no longer relevant to ask whether or not Pakistan will recognize the Jewish state. The question to be asked is: when? Available evidence, which points to outside pressure upon Islamabad to speed up the process, shows that the imprint on the Pakistani passport that says ‘Valid for all countries of the world except Israel’ may well become redundant in the near future.

But prior to that, Musharraf wants to test the ground, making sure that the political risk involved will be adequately rewarded. In his own words, "when I do something, I consider what is the worst that can happen? And if I can live with it, I go ahead and do it."

Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for any Pakistani ruler to publicly mention the issue of recognizing the Jewish state of Israel. Even now public opinion in Pakistan is strongly opposed to recognizing Israel, and thus, while conceding that recognizing Israel is a very contentious issue, Musharraf has been urging the Pakistani media to start an open and non-emotional debate on the issue.

He has justified raising the issue on the grounds that Pakistan does not have any dispute with Israel, and also on the grounds that the Palestinians themselves are edging towards peace with the Israelis and have already recognized Israel.

"Do we have to be more Catholic than the Pope or more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves?" he asked recently in an interview to a private television channel in Pakistan. "Is that the correct attitude? Or should we make a change? We must reach a national consensus on the subject, rather than leaving it to the emotionalism of the extremists," he added.

Like all the previous military rulers of Pakistan, Musharraf recognizes that the access road to the United States passes through Israel. This has already become a slogan for many regimes, especially in the Third World and Islamic and Arab worlds. Chanting this slogan, Pakistani military dictators have often reached the heart of Washington, a capital that has bestowed upon them financial, military, economic, and political support to further its own agenda. However, there are many neo-conservatives in the Bush administration who describe Pakistan as a militant Islamic state with weapons of mass destruction and argue that the recognition of Israel should be put forth as a test of the country’s moderation in foreign policy.

The Bush administration has thus been pushing General Pervez Musharraf to befriend Israel and demonstrate that Pakistan is indeed the moderate Islamic state that he pledges he wants it to be.

By doing so, the Bush administration believes, Islamabad can demonstrate that it is fully mindful and supportive of Washington’s vital security interests, which in the Middle East are represented by Israel.

Musharraf’s initiation of a debate on the issue is also motivated by the Pakistani establishment’s pre-occupation with external affairs at the cost of domestic developments. The establishment’s scheme for Pakistan has always rested on gaining foreign concessions - be these loans, debt waivers, or aid packages - that are usually obtained in exchange for harmonising Pakistan’s foreign policy with that of donors, mainly the US.

Therefore, it would seem that Islamabad’s change of heart on Israel has more to do with tactical considerations, rather than representing a strategic re-appraisal of its overall direction.

There are, however, also deeper strategic considerations at work. Pakistan’s ruling military establishment has realized that cordial relations with Israel will help regain the lost ground against India. Indian propaganda about Pakistan’s fundamentalist Islam portrays the country as the naughty boy of the region that supports anti-US and anti-Israeli movements. This has contributed to Pakistan’s strategic isolation in South Asia. As a result, the military leadership believes that despite extending fullest support to the US in its war on terror, Pakistan fails to get the status - and incentives - it deserves.

At the same time, a key factor propelling the present leadership in Pakistan is the growing Indo-Israeli strategic relationship.

Pakistan’s military strategists point out that over the past few years, a level of nuclear deterrence has been achieved between them and India with the development of nuclear-capable long and short range missiles. And although this nuclear deterrence has prevented the two neighbours from going to war in the past, India has begun seeking to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear threat by other means, such as the Patriot system and Mirage 2000-5 fighters.

India is offering Israel a big outlet for its arms industry so that Israel can push down its high defence budget-to-GNP ratio – currently a whopping 10%. Israel’s defense industry needs to export 75% of what it makes to be viable. And being a big buyer in the field, India could actually bail it out economically. Thus, in the post-9/11 era, Indo-Israeli cooperation has grown swiftly.

Today, Indo-Israel trade is touching $4.5bn, and India is already buying $2bn worth of high-tech arms from Israel. Islamabad, therefore, wants some of the same military aid packages and loans - and it believes that the only way to do this is by neutralizing the Israel lobby that has worked against Pakistan’s vital interests in the past.

On the other hand, establishing normal diplomatic ties with Pakistan, the only Muslim country which has nuclear capability, appears to be an important strategic goal for Israel which hopes that gaining diplomatic recognition by a key Islamic country with considerable influence in the Islamic world would help undermine hard line opposition towards Israel in other non-Middle Eastern Muslim states.

As a Muslim state, Pakistan could become strategically more important to Israel than India as a buyer of arms. India has offered itself as a partner in war; Israel actually needs a partner for peace in the Middle East.

As Pakistan moves forward to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement on the final settlement, it can also effectively prevent Israel from creating a military imbalance in South Asia through the supply of strategic weaponry to India. So, the establishment of diplomatic ties between Islamabad and Jerusalem may turn out to be a measure for the augmentation of peace and stability in South Asia, not just a means of improving Israel’s standing in the Muslim world. Joe de Courcy, Editor.