Trump demanded in a post on social media that Pakistan and a bunch of other Muslim-majority countries simultaneously join the Abraham Accords out of thanks to the US if it clinches a peace deal with Iran. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif rejected this out of hand as incompatible with his country’s “fundamental ideologies” and reiterated its long-standing policy that recognition of Israel can only follow the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Although Pakistan has had some secret contacts with Israel in the past, there are reasons to believe that Asif accurately conveyed its policy, essentially rubbishing speculation that Pakistan might soon join the Abraham Accords like others have previously speculated that it was considering. Apart from what Asif already said, the Pakistani government champions Muslim causes across the world, in large part due to being a state that was founded on the basis of Islam.
It therefore considers the Palestinian cause to be very important and practically akin to the Kashmiri one, so abandoning the first cause even if Saudi Arabia one day does would discredit the state’s long-standing approach towards the second cause. The corollary is that a hypothetical deal with India over Kashmir that formalizes the Line of Contact as the international border, thus abandoning Pakistan’s maximalist vision for that cause, could naturally precede abandoning its maximalist vision for the Palestinian cause.
In that scenario, Pakistan’s ruling establishment (which refers to the hybrid regime comprised of the powerful military and intelligence services that are fronted by political proxies) would lose its illegitimacy in many of its people’s eyes due to their strong support for both causes, thus risking widespread unrest. The state could easily crush the protesters like they crushed the PTI opposition led by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, but it would prefer not to have to do so due to the risk of negative press abroad.
Another important point is that formal recognition of Israel could also imply tacit acceptance of Israel forcefully changing the 1967 borders with Palestine. That would also be self-discrediting for Pakistan given its firm insistence that the Durand Line drawn by the British for separating the erstwhile Raj from Afghanistan, and which divided the Pashtun people, is sacrosanct. To be clear, Afghanistan cannot realistically change the Durand Line by force, but radicals could be emboldened by Pakistan’s hypocrisy.
Despite the arguments that were enumerated, cynics might claim that Pakistan’s re-subordination to the US since April 2022’s post-modern coup against Khan greatly raises the odds that it’ll still recognize Israel despite the self-inflicted harm that this would deal to its interests. While that’s theoretically possible, Trump also wrote in his post that “It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted”, so Pakistan might leverage its close ties with him to alleviate such pressure.
All told, the odds of Pakistan joining the Abraham Accords without a Palestinian state first being established are infinitesimally low. Much more likely is that it maintains occasional secret contacts with Israel while continuing to publicly champion the Palestinian cause. There are many relatively less significant Muslim-majority countries that have done less to advance US interests lately from its perspective than Pakistan has which could be successfully pressured to recognize Israel instead.
