There is a thought that sits quietly in the Islamic tradition, passed through scholars and classrooms for generations: Allah creates the cure before He sends the illness. He prepares the remedy before the disease arrives. Pakistan was born on August 14, 1947. The State of Israel was declared exactly nine months later on May 14, 1948, when Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Tel Aviv, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years. Nine months. That is the distance between Pakistan’s first breath and Palestine’s open wound. And from that first day, Pakistan made a choice it has never reversed.
What Pakistan Did Before the Ink Was Dry
Pakistan’s first Foreign Minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan called the Balfour Declaration illegitimate and rejected the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine at the UN. When David Ben-Gurion declared Israel on May 14, 1948, he personally contacted Jinnah attempting to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and Pakistan. He received no response. Jinnah had already sent a delegation to Cairo under Abdur Rehman Siddiqui to participate in the Inter-Parliamentary World Congress on Palestine just days after partition. Pakistan purchased 250,000 rifles from Czechoslovakia intended for the Arabs and three military aircraft from Italy for Egypt. This was a country six months old. It had no army to spare, no economy to absorb the cost, and no strategic benefit to gain. It spent what it had anyway.
Pakistan in Arab Skies
Pakistan’s support for Palestine went beyond statements and weapons. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Flight Lieutenant Saiful Azam was sent to Jordan as a PAF military advisor. He shot down 2 Israeli aircraft over Jordan’s Mafraq Airbase and 2 more after being transferred to Iraq. . He holds the highest shooting record of Israeli Air Force aircraft to this day. Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail, author of 3 books on airforce history, confirmed that PAF shot down 3 Israeli jets between June 5 and June 7, all by Saiful Azam.
In the 1973 Yom Kippur war, Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Dayan charged that Pakistani pilots were flying Jordanian aircraft that participated in the war. Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told President Assad that should Damascus be in danger from the Zionists, a Pakistani brigade would be ready to fly over and fight shoulder to shoulder with the Syrians
The India-Israel Alliance and What It Means for Pakistan
Since the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the India-Pakistan conflicts of 1965 and 1971, India procured weaponry and munitions from Israel. A connection between India’s RAW and Israel’s Mossad has existed since the 1960s. After the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi, India sought Israeli security services to revamp its entire security infrastructure. Since formalizing diplomatic ties in 1992, India and Israel have built a deep defence and intelligence relationship. Israeli drones, radar systems, and precision-guided munitions were reportedly used during the 1999 Kargil conflict and again during the Balakot airstrikes in 2019. During Operation Sindoor in May 2025, India deployed Israeli-supplied Barak 8 surface-to-air missile systems and HAROP loitering munitions manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries against Pakistani targets. The alliance that Pakistan warned about for decades was not a conspiracy theory.
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After the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024, Pakistan’s parliament passed a resolution calling it a “deliberate conspiracy to sabotage efforts to stop the ongoing oppression of Palestinians.” A senior Pakistani official accused India’s intelligence agency of collaborating with Israeli intelligence in the assassination. Today, as Israel marks 78 years since its declaration, 8.36 million Palestinian refugees including Nakba survivors and their descendants remain displaced, denied their internationally recognised right to return. Over 530 Palestinian villages were destroyed. The Nakba has never ended
The Meaning of Nine Months
Pakistan was born into a world that was about to inflict one of its most consequential injustices on a Muslim people. It arrived before that injustice with a voice, a vote, and a position it has never abandoned. Whether one reads that timing as coincidence or as something more carries its own meaning depending on one’s faith. What is not a matter of faith but of documented record is that Pakistan has been the most consistent Muslim voice for Palestinian statehood in every international forum for 78 continuous years. It has voted at the United Nations, raised its voice at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and maintained its refusal to normalise what has never been normal. On May 14, 2026, as Israel marks 78 years of its declaration, Pakistan marks 78 years of saying the same thing it said on the first day. Some positions do not need updating because the injustice they oppose has never ended.
