FOREIGN policy, nowadays, is routinely reduced to a transactional ledger of macroeconomic dependencies and shifting geopolitical alliances. Under severe fiscal duress, states frequently compromise on long-held ideals in exchange for economic lifelines or strategic access. Yet, Pakistan’s absolute refusal to extend diplomatic recognition to Israel (Occupied Palestine) stands as a profound anomaly. It is a strategic posture built not on contemporary political dynamics, but on an unyielding anti-imperial architecture laid down decades before 1947. Central to this enduring stance is a foundational principle of Islamabad that found its ultimate expression in a historic letter by Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to US President Harry Truman.

The baseline of Pakistan’s Middle East policy was forged in an acute awareness of Western imperial duplicity. While Great Britain secured Arab military mobilization against the Ottoman Empire during World War I........

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