Pakistan must engage with Israel to save Pakistani lives

[EpiiC]

Nonsense from zardari fan boy to put Turkeye with Arab and Iran. Turkeye and China are the only 2 loyal friends pakistan have today.

So many Pakis love Saudi blindly. In their eyes KSA can do no wrong due to the holy mosques.

 

[EpiiC]

India is india and they will get unconditional support from the world. Pakistan is a Muslim countries and there are many powers in the world who like to turn Pakistan into Iraq and Syria. They have tried many times and they will continue their efforts, sometimes with external pressure and sometimes internally by weakening our economy, bring people in power who destroy every system in the country and working against the interest of Pakistan and sometimes by divine us based on religion, sect, color, chaste, language, culture etc.

Iraqs economy is the same size as Pakistans pretty much $250B and $6000+ gdp per capita despite being destroyed in gulf wars.

 

[HammerHead081]

Religion can take a hike in geopolitics. Pakistan has no reason to be enemy of Israel. We should establish friendly relationship with them.

 

[EpiiC]

Religion can take a hike in geopolitics. Pakistan has no reason to be enemy of Israel. We should establish friendly relationship with them.

And more friendly relations with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Pakistan needs US so much for it development, right now right after China come US.... Pakistan was bank rolled by Washington now its renting Beijing....

 

[cloud4000]

Wrong, Pakistan believe in dialogs and could mediate between Israel and Palestine which would force pressure on bhartis too.

Also Israel could see the nazi Bharti and distance themselves from modern day Bharti nazi regime.

I don't know what planet you are on but it's not earth. How can Pakistan mediate between Palestine and Israel when 1) Pakistan is clearly in Palestine's camp and 2) Pakistan doesn't recognize Israel?

Israel is in India's camp. They are not interested in what Pakistan has to say.

Also Israel could see the nazi Bharti and distance themselves from modern day Bharti nazi regime.

You would think Israel, of all countries, would know what a Nazi state looks like because you clearly don't.

 

[Old School]

Israel will not fix our economy which has it's own economic problems. Israel itself is not a donor country either. It is a recipient instead.
By setting up relationship with Israel, our politicians And army will become slave to Israeli remote control based in Delhi.
Our main problems are Jahilyat and endemic corruption which can not be fixed by another indicted and corrupted PM Bibi Netanyahu.

 

[jupiter2007]

So many Pakis love Saudi blindly. In their eyes KSA can do no wrong due to the holy mosques.

Pakistan need institution of foreign policy to focus on improving our foreign policy and put our interest above any other country. Our current foreign policy toward ME countries depend our economy and remittances coming from these countries. If we somehow we can improve our economy, turn unskilled workers into skilled workers, create jobs in Pakistan so they don’t have to travel to ME countries, it will change our foreign policy toward these countries otherwise they will continue to threaten us by sending our unskilled worker back to Pakistan.

 

[HammerHead081]

rofl ... stand against injustice whereever it is, whether internal or externL

If that is the case then stand against China due to the uighyr muslim matter. Why we are not standing against China? Because we are not idiots. Because competent leaders know that religion has no place in geopolitics. Pakistan should always look for its own interests. Estabilishing good relations with Israel in our own interests. I bet my *** that if India starts to donate tons of stuff to Palestine, next day they will be supporting India on Kashmir issue because it's in their interest. Stop being a child in terms of geopolitics, grow out of your shell.

 

[HammerHead081]

And more friendly relations with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Pakistan needs US so much for it development, right now right after China come US.... Pakistan was bank rolled by Washington now its renting Beijing....

That's not a bad thing per se, its actually necessary in my opinion. Pakistan should be on good terms with both USA and China as they are current superpowers. A country with such small economy as ours don't have the capacity to piss off superpowers.

 

[Cygnus Black]

Some of us have actually read the Torah, the Gospel and the Holy Qur'an. Some of also know the history of Jews and make the distinction between Hebrew Jews (real Jews) and white skinned morons parading around as Jews (Zionists). Bottom line is that Afghanistan and Pakistan shall not ever recognize israel as a state, as it was created on the foundation of lies, deception, murders and fascism.

Israel was built and is expanding upon the blood of native Palestinians, no doubt about that. But America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were also built upon genocide and enslavement of natives. Why do we have working relationship with all of these genocidal states except one?

 

[peagle]

Pakistan Must Engage With Israel to Save Pakistani Lives

What has Pakistan achieved from its perpetual boycott of Israel? What has it achieved for the Palestinians? Doesn’t logic demand a reassessment, not least when Israel can help save our economy and aid our survival?

Sumeera Asghar Roy, Hassan F. Virk

5 hours ago

A man waits for transportation next to a roadside stall displaying national flags in Rawalpindi on August 4, 2020, ahead of Pakistan's 74th anniversary of independence from British rule

Pakistan’s foreign policy has been incoherent and inconsistent since its inception. It has suffered from a chasm between policy and strategy, xenophobic tendencies, domestic politics interfering negatively with the foreign policy process, and vice versa – including the unsettling influence of the military on civilian politics and the outsize impact of religious groups.

Policy-makers, rather than focusing on the policy process and the outcomes, serially succumb to socio-religious pressures, intensifying policy volatility, and that volatility, read as vulnerability, opens Pakistan up to manipulation by stronger world powers.

The result is that on the issues that Pakistan flags as central to its foreign policy principles – the Kashmir issue and the rights of Palestinians – Islamabad’s achievements have been barely discernible.

While Pakistan ventured into the marshlands of jihad – a tryst with international terrorism which began in the 1980s and brought home a perpetual religious radicalization, sectarianism and Kalashnikov culture that continues to this day – India was laying the ground for diplomatic ties with Israel, a process which sped up after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Around the same time, unrest began in Kashmir, and Pakistan became involved with a new aspect of the on/off conflict with India. Militants were strategically rerouted to Kashmir to keep India at bay.

A protester sprinkles petrol to burn representations of Israeli and US flags during al-Quds Day in Peshawar, Pakistan, May 22, 2020. Banner reads 'America and Israel are terrorists.'

In the 2000s, the second Palestinian intifada and a surge of terrorism in Pakistan coincided. Pakistan was pre-occupied; its engagement with the Israel-Palestine conflict was muted.

Today, India and Israel have celebrated more than a quarter-century of official ties. Pakistan, which focused its domestic energies and diplomatic capital in fighting for the right to Palestinian and Kashmiri self-determination, won nothing. The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been annexed by India. Israel is on the verge of annexing the West Bank.

All this begs the question: What has Pakistan achieved from its policy of a perpetual boycott of Israel? Doesn’t logic demand a reassessment, if there's nothing to show after all these decades of resentment and negligence? What about venturing out of a stagnant policy pool and into fresher waters?

The choice of metaphor is not accidental. It is in the field of water, more specifically, water scarcity, that Pakistan’s obstinacy towards relations with Israel seem the most irresponsible. It would even be possible to say it threatens Pakistanis’ lives.

A woman pushes a handcart loaded with drinking water containers on a street in Rawalpindi on July 22, 2020.

Currently, Pakistan is facing an acute water shortage, and it may become a water stress country in 2025, when (with an annual per capita availability of less than 1,000 cubic meters) fresh water becomes critically scarce. The International Monetary Fund ranks Pakistan as third among countries facing an acute water shortage. According to the World Economic Forum report, the biggest threat Pakistan faces, along with much of South Asia, is the water crisis.

Often unaware about the rate that groundwater is being depleted, and by what that will means for their livelihoods, Pakistanis have so far shown little concern about how they’re utilizing water.

The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources has also warned about the gravity of the situation, reporting that Pakistan first touched the water stress line in 1990, crossed the water scarcity line in 2005, and is at the risk of a 30 million acre feet shortage in the years to come. Experts calculate that Pakistan will be the most water-stressed country in the region by 2040.

Laborers pack prized mangoes into boxes at a farm in Multan, Pakistan, as dwindling harvests and the the coronavirus crisis mean a disastrous season. June 22, 2020.

The implications for Pakistan’s economy when there is not enough water are dire for its 212 million people, and insufficiently recognized within the country. Nearly 20 percent of GDP is dependent on agriculture. Around 40 percent of the entire labor force is engaged in agriculture, including a full 67 percent of all working women.

But Pakistan’s agriculture sector is infamously inefficient in regards to water use: 90 percent of the country’s water sources are directed towards farming, but a quarter of that water is lost through leaks and other irrigation failures.

So how is water scarcity and Pakistan's foreign policy towards Israel connected?

One of the key factors that have saved Israel, a country located in the relatively arid Middle East, from water scarcity and stress has been its development and adoption of technology in agriculture, based on the rigorous utilization of every drop of available water.

An agricultural development project run by Israel’s biggest irrigation technology companies, Netafim, in India. 2016.

Those advances range from national projects like desalination (converting seawater into drinking water), to state-assisted industries like agritech, to private sector enterprises specializing in drip irrigation, sprinkler irrigation system, recycling graywater and advanced fertilization mechanisms and machinery.

Israel has introduced bio-pesticides, bio-fertilizers, and AI in agriculture, including robots and sensors – to the extent that plants may soon be able to "talk" to humans to convey their requirements. Israel currently recycles 86 percent of its water, by far the highest rate in the world. Israel now manages to not only fulfil its own water demand but also exports its expertise to more than 150 countries, including some in the Arab world – except Palestine, which suffers from severe shortages.

Had Pakistan been able to access this panoply of technologies and best practice, agriculture could have increased its share of Pakistan’s GDP from 26 to 36-40 percent – simply by increased production and yield.

If Pakistan could swallow using Israeli weapons during the 1980s Operation Cyclone, the CIA program arming the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, why can't it use Israeli technology for constructive purposes? Pakistan urgently needs assistance from agricultural scientists and experts to overhaul its existing outdated agricultural and water management systems, before it’s too late.

A Pakistani farmer sorts the wheat during the harvest in Muzaffargarh in Punjab province, Pakistan, Monday, Nov. 1, 2010.

But is it really feasible to divorce politics from development aid and cooperation?

Israel is almost self-sufficient in terms of agricultural products. Even with very little territory, it has always been a net exporter to countries with enormous areas under cultivation, such as India. Most of its agricultural machinery is produced domestically and not imported from China.

Being based in Beijing, I've observed that in all the major universities and research institutes, there are Chinese-Israeli Cooperation Centers of Excellence in Biotechnology, agricultural development and innovation. China is Israel's third-largest trading partner globally and its largest trading partner in Asia. And China is one of the few countries in the world to have concurrently maintained warm relations with Israel, Palestine, and the Muslim world at large.

As Pakistan lags behind in agricultural and scientific advancements, particularly in water and irrigation, it is high time for both countries to extend an olive branch to each other. As a country, we ses ourselves in a permanent competition with India – but India is already laps ahead in development cooperation with Israel. Pakistan has a lot of catching up to do.

Pakistan could also learn from Israel how to encourage civil society’s enthusiasm and respect for political and scientific realities. Israel celebrates its scientists and Nobel laureates. We call ours “foreign-funded agents.” Exactly this kind of conspiratorial disrespect led to the exile of Dr. Abdus Salam, the first and only Pakistani scientist to win the Nobel Prize.

Pakistani flood survivors wait their turn for food distribution by The Al-furqane Foundation Trust at a camp in Nowshera on August 16, 2010.

China, our all-weather friend, invests in extensive agricultural research joint-ventures on with India. In Pakistan, Beijing’s priorities are infrastructure projects and luxury resorts in Pakistan. Is that difference sdue to radically different domestic priorities in India and Pakistan, or because a superpower invests according to the worth of its target states are?

Until now, Pakistan has failed to be anything more than a 'frontline ally in the war against terror' or a 'massive construction site': it simply has not insisted on a focus on scientific and agricultural development. But there must be a better way.

Pakistan's exclusionary foreign policy towards Israel is based on its wrongdoings against Palestinian Muslims. But if that's the real reason, then why hasn't Pakistan boycotted America for its wrongdoings against the Muslim populations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, arming Israel against Hezbollah and PLO; why has it not boycotted India over wrongdoings in Gujarat and Kashmir?

If Egypt and Jordan, neighboring Muslim-majority states who’ve been directly affected countries by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can make politico-economic deals with Israel for the good of their peoples, why can't Pakistan, which is far removed from the conflict?

Pakistan could do much more for the Palestinians if it does first what it needs to do for Pakistanis.

Sumeera Asghar Roy is a PhD candidate at the China Agricultural University in Beijing. She holds a master's degree in Horticulture from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. She has represented Pakistan at many global events relating to agriculture, and her work has been published in The Nation, Policy Forum, Pakistan Today and other outlets

Hassan F. Virk is a Lecturer of Politics and Development Studies at the School of Integrated Social Sciences and Research Associate at the Center for Security, Strategy, and Policy Research, University of Lahore

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/...with-israel-to-save-pakistani-lives-1.9058526

Although I myself support building conditional relations with Israel, but this article is based on stupid arguments and stupid conclusions, considering they are supposed to be scholars, one would expect a better argument than saying because this country did that, so should we, and because that country did it, why haven't we, it is very childish and stupid.

Each country had different reasons, different histories, and different domestic compulsions driving their actions towards Israel.

 

[jupiter2007]

Iraqs economy is the same size as Pakistans pretty much $250B and $6000+ gdp per capita despite being destroyed in gulf wars.

Iraq might not be correct example. It’s all about divide and conquer policy.
We will learn so much if we read our history and learn how outsider (crusaders, foreign forces) used people within the system to destroy us.

 

[EpiiC]

Israel was built and is expanding upon the blood of native Palestinians, no doubt about that. But America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were also built upon genocide and enslavement of natives. Why do we have working relationship with all of these genocidal states except one?

Because we follow the orders of "ARAB MASTERS", they told us not to recognize Israel so we obeyed, what else could we do? 50-70 years ago we was not an important country, today with 220 million we are still not an important country, in fact Pakistan is more of a failure now than it was 50 years ago.

 

[Trango Towers]

Effing zionists think they are gods. Only for america

 

[EpiiC]

Iraq might not be correct example. It’s all about divide and conquer policy.
We will learn so much if we read our history and learn how outsider (crusaders, foreign forces) used people within the system to destroy us.

We cannot blame foreigners, stop believing in every conspiracy you hear, what has Pakistan done to develop its human capital? Very little to nothing, we have been overtaken by Bangladesh economically, time to wake up, Bd economy is $350b and Pak $260b, they gdp per capita is nearly double of Pakistans, they leaving us in dark when it comes developing and progressing and giving their citizens a better life.... By the way they have 60 million people less than us and have embarrassed us with their progress.