At the end of a long and punishing war, representatives of a young and battered United States arrived in Paris in 1783 to sign the treaty that would formally end the American Revolutionary War. What made the Treaty of Paris historic was not merely the end of fighting, but Britain’s recognition of American independence, American sovereignty, the ceding of territory, and the arrival of a new political reality. For the Americans who had fought through years of uncertainty, exhaustion, and sacrifice, the treaty settled fundamental questions about power, legitimacy, and their right to exist and govern themselves.

Years later, amid another scene of European grandeur, a very different diplomatic document was signed. In 2026, President Donald Trump signed a U.S.-Iran memorandum at the Palace of Versailles following a G7 gathering hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. At the same time, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif celebrated from Islamabad, presenting the “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding” as a breakthrough for regional stability and portraying Pakistan as a broker of peace. The mediation itself was between Washington and Tehran and didn’t involve Israel directly. Yet that distinction does not reduce its importance for Jerusalem. On paper, it promised an end to immediate hostilities and a path toward de-escalation. Inside Israel, however, the memorandum was met not with relief, but with unease.

At its core, the framework calls for an “immediate and permanent” end to military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, while pressure on Iran begins to ease before the hardest issues are resolved. That matters because Lebanon is not an abstract front for Israel. It is the arena through which Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, has repeatedly attacked Israeli civilians and tested Israel’s northern border. The naval blockade begins to come down immediately and is to be fully ended within 30 days. Commercial passage from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman is to restart, economic mechanisms worth hundreds of billions of dollars are to be developed, and oil-related waivers arrive before a final deal is complete. Meanwhile, the disposition of enriched material, IAEA supervision, enrichment, enforcement, and the long-term nuclear framework are pushed into the next stage of negotiations. This is the imbalance. Relief first, verification later; economic oxygen first, nuclear enforcement later; a diplomatic umbrella over Lebanon first, Israel’s security needs after the fact.

Living through war for decades has taught Israelis the price of conflict more deeply than most nations. There is nothing wrong with peace. After years of rocket and missile attacks, terror waves, military operations, and now a multi-front conflict stretching from Gaza to Lebanon and involving Iran directly, many Israelis are simply exhausted. They want this war to end. They want their children to grow up without sirens, reservists to return permanently to their families, and entire communities to stop living between periods of uneasy calm and the next round of violence. But Israelis are not looking for a temporary pause that merely postpones the next confrontation. They want a peace that is stable, durable, and enforceable, not a cycle in which Iran regroups, rearms its proxies, and returns every year with a new campaign.

And for such a peace to be achieved, and for war to truly end, the mediator must be both credible and trustworthy. Even when a mediator is not negotiating directly on Israel’s behalf, its worldview matters if the deal it produces places limits on Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon while leaving Iran’s nuclear questions unresolved for a later stage. Before Pakistan is celebrated as a stabilizing force in a framework that affects Israel’s security, its own record must be examined with clarity. There is an old saying about the fox guarding the chicken coop. In this case, Pakistan is not guarding Israel directly. But it is helping shape the fence around a conflict in which Israel’s security is directly exposed, and that makes the identity of the fox impossible to ignore.

Diplomacy begins with recognition, and Pakistan does not recognize Israel. This is neither a minor technicality nor a temporary........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)