A delegation of Pakistani citizens visited the country about two weeks ago, Israel Today has learned.
This is an unofficial delegation whose majority members have dual citizenship and reside in the US, but two of them have only Pakistani citizenship and reside in the country.
One of the two is Ahmad Qureishi, a fairly well-known journalist in Pakistan, who has also previously served as an adviser to President Pervez Mushraf and often posts moderate and pro-Western messages on social media.
According to his Twitter account, he covers the areas of national security and human rights.
The other guest, Fischel Ben-Khaled, identifies as a Pakistani Jew and wears a kippah on a regular basis.
The two did not hide their visit to Israel, and Ben-Khaled even exchanged his background photo on Twitter for a group photo of the delegation in the company of President Herzog.
In other photos, members of the delegation are seen at the Western Wall, at Yad Vashem and next to the menorah model in the rose garden outside the Knesset.
Sharaka was honored to bring a delegation of Muslims and Sikhs from southeast Asia including the first Pakistani Jew allowed to travel to Israel to visit Israeli President Issac Herzog.
The delegates spoke to the President about their efforts to develop relationships with Israel pic.twitter.com/mMkBxQS4fT
- Sharaka - شراكة (@sharakango) May 10, 2022
The visit resonated widely in Pakistan - the second largest Muslim country in the world, with more than 220 million inhabitants and a prominent presence of Islamist movements such as al-Qaeda and ISIS (among others, Osama bin Laden hid in Pakistan until he was assassinated by the Americans in the north of the country).
There are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Pakistan, but last year it was reported that the navy announced that it would participate in an international exercise in which the Pakistani navy also took part.
Israel attaches strategic importance to Pakistan, in part because it is the only Muslim country with operational nuclear capability, and because of the common border it shares with Iran.
It should be noted that visits to Israel by journalists and bloggers from the Gulf states at the end of the previous decade were a preliminary sign of the warming of ties between the Gulf and Israel - a warming that contributed greatly to the breakthrough to the Abrahamic Accords.
However, two months after their signing in 2020, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imro Khan was quick to declare that Islamabad would not recognize Jerusalem "as long as a just settlement with the Palestinians is not reached" even though "they put pressure on us to recognize Israel" - a pressure apparently linked to Nur's remarks. Dahari, a British-Pakistani independent researcher and head of the Islamic Theology Institute for Combating Terrorism (ITCT), told Israel Today that Pakistan "has not completely slammed the door on the issue, but has national interests that do not allow it to start an open relationship with the Jewish state."
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us