Every Pakistani passport carries a line most citizens never think twice about: it is valid for every country in the world except Israel. That single clause, still in force in 2026, says more about the state of Pakistan–Israel relations than any communiqué could. Pakistan has never recognised Israel, and public sympathy for the Palestinian cause is close to universal. Understanding why — and what, realistically, could change over time — matters for anyone interested in interfaith relations, regional stability, or soft-power diplomacy in the Muslim world’s second-most populous nation.

Where the position comes from

The refusal to recognise Israel is not a recent policy or the product of a single leader. It traces back to Pakistan’s founding in 1947, when the new state aligned itself with the Palestinian cause and opposed Israel’s creation at the United Nations. Non-recognition has been consistent, bipartisan, and largely unquestioned in mainstream politics ever since.

Much of that consistency is reinforced by a domestic parallel: Pakistani officials and commentators routinely draw a direct line between Kashmir and Palestine, framing both as unresolved struggles against occupation. In that framing, recognising Israel would not just be a foreign-policy shift — it would look like abandoning Kashmir and, by extension, a founding piece of Pakistani identity.

Geopolitics adds further weight. Ties with Iran, rivalry with India — sharpened by India’s own warming relationship with Israel — and Pakistan’s standing across the wider Muslim world all push in the same direction. For most Pakistanis, direct contact with Jews or Israelis is simply rare, which leaves the subject to abstraction, rhetoric, and, at times, hostility rather than lived experience.

What the classroom teaches

Public attitudes are also shaped early, in the classroom. An August 2025 review by IMPACT-se, the international watchdog that monitors school curricula for peace and tolerance standards, examined 86 government-approved textbooks used in Punjab, Sindh, and federal schools. Its findings were stark: recurring negative portrayals of Jews, including old tropes accusing them of treachery and disloyalty; the complete absence of Judaism from comparative-religion material; no mention of the Holocaust anywhere in the curriculum; and one civics textbook that praised Adolf Hitler for “restoring German pride” without any reference to Nazi crimes.

The same textbooks frame Israel as the sole aggressor in the Gaza conflict, with no mention of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. IMPACT-se’s chief executive, Marcus Sheff, has argued that given Pakistan’s regional weight, nuclear status, and young population, this kind of curriculum carries consequences well beyond its own borders. These patterns are not new — they intensified during the Islamisation drives of the 1980s — but they remain embedded in material taught to children today.

Support for the Palestinian cause is one of the few positions that unites Pakistan’s otherwise fractured political spectrum — which is precisely why so few politicians are willing to complicate it. — based on Gallup Pakistan polling and domestic political analysis

Gallup Pakistan surveys in recent years have consistently found sympathy for Palestinians above 90 percent, against a figure for Israel in the low single digits. That imbalance gives anti-Israel rhetoric real domestic political utility: it is one of the few positions that unites religious conservatives, secular nationalists, and everyone in between. Any rumour of normalisation has historically triggered street protests, which further discourages political leaders from even raising the subject.

A pact that changes little — and a movement that might change more

Some readers will point to August’s trilateral Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan as evidence that the regional map is shifting. It is a significant development in South Asian and Middle Eastern security, but it is a defence pact, not a normalisation deal, and it leaves the underlying questions about Israel and Jews inside Pakistani society untouched. Structural change, if it comes, will not arrive through a defence communiqué. It will come — slowly — through education, contact, and trust-building.

That is where models like the Abrahamic Reunion are instructive. Founded in the mid-2000s as a network of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Druze religious leaders, it has spent two decades organising interfaith iftars, peace walks, and joint study of each other’s scriptures across Israel and the wider region — small, repeated acts of contact built around the shared figure of Abraham, or Ibrahim, rather than around unresolved political disputes. It will not settle Kashmir or Gaza. But it offers a template: reframe the relationship around shared spiritual heritage first, and let personal trust do work that formal diplomacy currently cannot.

Language is a barrier that gets less attention than it deserves. Almost nothing produced by Israeli institutions reaches ordinary readers in India or Pakistan in their own language, which leaves Urdu-speaking audiences dependent entirely on domestic media and textbooks for their picture of Jews and Israel. An Urdu-language newspaper, dedicated Urdu departments at Israeli universities, and a new virtual university offering Urdu-medium instruction would not resolve the underlying dispute, but they would give roughly 230 million Urdu speakers a direct channel to Jewish and Israeli voices for the first time — a modest, practical step toward the same goal as the Abrahamic Reunion’s work: replacing abstraction with contact.

What real progress would look like

None of this points toward Pakistan recognising Israel any time soon, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. The ideological, educational, and political foundations of the current position are deep, and they will not be dissolved by a single agreement or gesture. But “no recognition” and “no change” are not the same thing. A Pakistan where children learn accurate history, where minorities are better protected, and where interfaith contact is normal rather than rare, is a more tolerant Pakistan regardless of what its passport says about Israel.

That is a domestically driven project, not one that can be imported or imposed. It will be slow, and it will be contested. But textbooks can be rewritten, journalists can choose their words more carefully, and religious leaders can choose dialogue over denunciation — and each of those choices, however small, moves the needle further than any communiqué signed in Mecca or anywhere else.