On 26th December 1938, long before the map of South Asia was redrawn, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah stood before a roaring crowd in Patna and delivered a searing indictment of Western imperialism that echoes directly into our contemporary geopolitical reality.

"You know the Arabs have been treated shamelessly. Men who, fighting for the freedom of their country, have been described as gangsters, and subjected to all forms of repression. For defending their homelands, they are being put down at the point of the bayonet. All our sympathies are with those valiant martyrs of Palestine."

This was not a casual statement of religious affinity; it was a defining declaration of statecraft. In an era where modern international relations are frequently reduced to a transactional ledger of shifting alliances and macroeconomic dependencies, Pakistan’s unyielding stance on the Palestine cause stands as a powerful testament to ideological consistency. To view Islamabad’s absolute refusal to recognise Israel, whom I call Occupied Palestine, as a reactionary byproduct of pan-Islamic solidarity is to misread history. Support for the Palestinian cause is a foundational pillar of Pakistan's state identity, conceptualised by its fathers decades before 1947 and deeply embedded in the nation's strategic consciousness.

The roots of this commitment lie in an acute awareness........

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