Pakistan's Foreign Policy towards Israel: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract

The foreign policy of Pakistan has been incoherent and shifty since its inception. The reason behind this volatility is that the policy-makers, rather than focusing on the policy process and the outcomes, have always succumbed to socio-religious pressures. Resultantly the major powers of the world have manipulated Pakistan into doing their bids. The negative aspects in Pakistan’s foreign policy are not hard to discern: gap between policy and strategy, xenophobic tendencies, domestic politics negatively affecting the foreign policy process and vice versa –including the civil-military discord and influence of religious pressure groups. This disorderly nature of foreign policy can be traced back to the decolonization and Partition of India in 1947.

In order to appraise Pakistan’s Israel policy, this paper has been divided into two parts: the first indulges in critical history method of interpretation while the second attempts to formulate a new perspective on Pakistan’s foreign policy towards Israel while offering clarification to some contemporary problems in the framing and implementation of Pakistan’s future foreign policy towards Israel.