The cat is finally out of the bag. Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmud Kasuri has met his Israeli counterpart, bringing down curtain on more than half a century-old drama of love and hate. The meeting took place in Istanbul but nothing Byzantine about it.
After chitchat at dinner the night before the two met for over two hours under full media glare and discussed almost everything under the sun. It took you eighteen years to make up your mind to speak to us, Silvan Shalom complained. But we have met and that's great, Kasuri must have responded.
This meeting has been on the cards almost ever since these two ideological entities came into being. But President Rafique Tarar predicted it with prophetic assertion. In 1998, according to Israeli media, he had met with Israeli counterpart Ezer Weizman in Ankara where both were guests at the 75th independence ceremony of modern Turkey. Tarar approached Weizman and shook hands with him. "I have heard a great deal about you as a man of peace", he told the Israeli leader and expressed hope that "one day we will meet again."
Before he met the Israeli president there had been scores of direct and indirect contacts between the leaders and officials of the two countries, but clandestine as these were they were never admitted.
Of course Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had declared creation of Israel a crime, but that perspective underwent change over time, and not many years later Sir Zafarullah conceded the Jewish State as a "limb in the body of Middle East" and urged peaceful settlement. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto vehemently opposed the Jewish State but General Ziaul Haq, the man who carried out the Black September massacre, discovered commonality that both Pakistan and Israel were ideological countries.
"Take out Judaism from Israel and it will fall like a house of cards. Take Islam out of Pakistan and make it a secular state it would collapse."
In 1994, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would have been in Gaza, as a vicarious guest of the Israeli hospitality, when she was travelling to Cairo but for the clumsy handling of the visit by Ambassador T.K. Khan. Within a few months of that incident Ambassador Ahmad Kamal was guest at a reception by the Israel's UN Ambassador. Nawaz Sharif' ambassador to Washington Syeda Abida Hussain had found nothing wrong in having ties with Tel Aviv.
In between and even after that a number of chance meetings in the corridors at international conferences had necessitated courtesy handshakes between the leaders and officials of the two countries. As for the private sector contacts these have been substantial.
But when one of the same very contacts took place in the open, in Istanbul on Thursday, it stunned the Pakistanis. The National Assembly sitting on Friday morning could not take up even a single agenda item, because an agitated opposition wanted to discuss the meeting in Istanbul. Its argument was that the government took a huge U-turn while the parliament was not taken into confidence, a breach of privilege of the House committed by the government. But the government and Speaker Amir Hussain were ready to face the situation, as was evident by the rather early arrival of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, accompanied by party leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, in the House.
MMA's Fareed Paracha fired the opening shot, followed by Hafiz Hussain Ahmad and Liaquat Baloch. Law Minister Wasi Zafar rejected the opposition's perception, saying the meeting in Istanbul did not mean recognition of Israel. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan, however, welcomed the opposition's demand for discussion and said, "The issue concerns the security of Pakistan.
Are we not risking country's security by refusing to have relations with Israel?" PPPP's Raja Pervaiz Ashraf complained that the parliament was bypassed; Khwaja Asif said the meeting with Israeli minister was the brainchild of a "single person who has become Aql-e-Qul", but Shujaat was biblical in expression: "If marriage with a Jew is permitted why not a meeting with him (or her)". The Speaker admitted the issue for discussion as an adjournment motion.
Meanwhile, the MMA members staged a token walkout but the ARD members did not join them. This was a divergence of great significance because while the MMA members attacked the government for colluding with Israel "in the darkness of the night"; the ARD members' anger stemmed from their protest that the decision to hold meeting with Israeli foreign minister was without the knowledge of the parliament.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Khusro Bukhtiar wound up the debate that lasted merely 80 minutes. He took the position that the meeting did not amount to recognition of Israel and it was in pursuance of Palestinian President Mehmud Abbas's request to "engage" Tel Aviv on the issue of evacuation of occupied territories.
But the Prime Minister was more elaborate. Asserting that his government's foreign policy was exclusively devoted to protection and promotion of Pakistan's national interests, he said the meeting in Istanbul did not mean recognition of Israel. Mehmud Abbas had requested President Musharraf to "engage" Israel for which Pakistan put an "indicator" and that was pullout from Gaza Strip. Pakistan had also taken King Abdullah and some other leaders into confidence. Once the Gaza Strip evacuation was completed the meeting took place. As for the recognition it would await till Palestine is independent, he added.
It makes sense that Kasuri-Shalom meeting was to help Israeli evacuation from Gaza Strip and other settlements, but where do you fit the invitation that Musharraf received from the Jewish Congress to speak to it during a visit to United Nations later this month. Sher Afgan and State Minister Shahnaz Sheikh in their speeches in the House had obliquely hinted of a threat to Pakistan's security. What was that threat? The jigsaw map is not yet complete.
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