by Junaid S Ahmad
The timing is damning. After months of relentless bombardment and mass killing in Gaza—acts that fit every legal and moral definition of genocide—Palestinians are now being pressured into accepting an obscene “peace plan” devised by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan does not end dispossession; it codifies it. It keeps Palestinians permanently colonized, fragmented, and exposed to the next cycle of ethnic cleansing. Against this backdrop, the Saudi–Pakistan pact is not a shield against injustice but a declaration of complicity in it.
Four Facades of the Pact
Observers have advanced four main explanations for the pact, each of which reveals more about the anxieties of the ruling elites than about genuine security concerns.
- Projection of Strength
For Riyadh, the partnership with Pakistan’s army offers the illusion of deterrence. Saudi Arabia lacks its own battle-hardened force, so it rents one. The symbolism is clear: the kingdom can borrow Pakistan’s nuclear shadow and parade its generals as proof of strength. But this show of force is not aimed at Israel, which the monarchy has no intention of confronting. It is directed at the Arab street, where anger at Gaza still simmers, and at Iran, whose mere survival unnerves Riyadh’s rulers. - Return to Cold War Patronage
The second explanation is even less flattering. During the Cold War, Pakistani generals became mercenaries for Gulf monarchies, fighting their wars and suppressing dissent in exchange for petrodollars. Washington blessed the arrangement, seeing in it a useful anti-communist alliance. Today, the template has been revived: instead of fighting socialism, Pakistan’s generals are tasked with smoothing the road toward normalization with Israel. They denounce Tel Aviv in public while, in private, preparing Muslim societies to swallow the bitter pill of apartheid as permanent. - Flirtation with Beijing
A third reading suggests Saudi Arabia is hedging by leveraging Pakistan’s ties with China. Yet this so-called triangulation reeks of performance. Saudi rulers remain bound hand and foot to American protection; Beijing may provide weapons or buy oil, but it cannot guarantee the survival of the monarchy against internal revolt. The spectacle of a Saudi–Pakistani–Chinese axis is staged not to signal independence, but to irritate Washington just enough to bargain for better terms, while never risking actual estrangement. - Reaction to Israeli Maneuvers*
Finally, some analysts point to Israel’s limited strikes in the region as the trigger. But the idea that Israel contemplates war with Gulf monarchies is laughable. These monarchies have never defended Palestinians, nor will they. The apology Tel Aviv extended to Doha after one such episode underscores the absurdity: Israel knows its real partners are the very rulers who mouth platitudes about Palestine.
Together, these explanations point to the same reality: the pact is an instrument of elite survival, not of Muslim solidarity.
Theater of Outrage
Nothing illustrates the politics of theater better than the United Nations podium. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently delivered a speech that echoed Imran Khan’s earlier electrifying address, complete with raised voice and rehearsed indignation at Israel’s crimes. Yet within 24 hours, Sharif and Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir were shaking hands with American officials. The UN speech was a performance for the gallery; the real script was being enacted in Washington’s halls of power.
This duplicity is decades old. Arab and Muslim leaders weep for Palestine before cameras, then collude with Tel Aviv and Washington behind closed doors. The Saudi–Pakistan pact is simply the latest prop in this tired play. By contrast, when leaders in Latin America—such as Gustavo Petro—take actual stands, they face swift reprisals, from visa bans to economic pressure. In West Asia, by contrast, symbolic outrage costs nothing precisely because it is designed never to be acted upon.
Mercenaries in Khaki and Silk
Pakistan’s military establishment has long perfected the art of mercenary service. In the 1970s, General Zia ul Haq helped crush Palestinian fighters in Jordan during Black September. Ever since, Pakistani officers have been embedded in Gulf security structures, protecting palaces from both external enemies and internal dissent.
In 2015, Pakistan’s parliament briefly resisted Saudi pressure to join the Yemen war. The backlash from Riyadh was ferocious: threats of oil cutoffs and expulsion of Pakistani workers. Yet even then, the generals privately reassured the monarchy that their loyalty was unwavering. The message was clear: Pakistani soldiers might avoid Yemen’s quagmire, but they would fight to the death to secure the Saudi royal throne. For the generals, this was never about Islamic solidarity; it was about rent.
Iran, Israel, and Double Games
The hypocrisy runs deeper still. Pakistani leaders loudly condemn Israeli attacks on Iran, portraying themselves as defenders of Muslim unity. Yet Tehran is well aware that Mossad networks have found safe havens in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The duplicity is obvious: Islamabad plays the role of public critic while quietly enabling the very espionage that undermines Iran.
Such double games are not aberrations; they are the system itself. They allow generals to claim the mantle of Muslim leadership while acting as subcontractors for empire.
Normalization by Stealth
The most consequential goal of this entire choreography is normalization with Israel. Washington and Tel Aviv know Saudi Arabia is inching toward it. But Pakistan, with its massive population and symbolic weight as a “nuclear Islamic power,” is the greater prize.
In recent years, Pakistani media suddenly erupted with debates about recognizing Israel. Anchors who opposed normalization were mocked as backward; those who supported it were elevated. This was no organic shift—it was a psyop, orchestrated by the military establishment. The goal was to acclimate elites to the idea that recognition of Israel is inevitable, while leaving the public’s fierce opposition irrelevant.
Imran Khan rejected such moves unequivocally, standing with the 99.9 percent of Pakistanis who saw normalization as betrayal. That alone made him an obstacle. When he began charting a more independent course in foreign policy—resisting American diktats, warming to China and Russia—he crossed a line. Washington’s patience wore thin, and in March–April 2022, a military-engineered, U.S.-backed regime change operation toppled him. The generals, long accustomed to obeying empire, reclaimed their throne.
Khan’s ouster exposed the mechanics of hegemony: elected leaders who deviate are swiftly disciplined, while pliant elites are rewarded. The Saudi–Pakistan pact is one of the dividends of that discipline.
Gaza and the “Peace Plan”
No assessment of this pact can ignore Gaza. In the last round of slaughter, Israel reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, bombed hospitals and schools, and massacred civilians with impunity. International jurists have described these acts as genocide, and the world watched in horror as Palestinians were starved, displaced, and annihilated.
Now, instead of justice, they are told to accept Trump and Netanyahu’s “peace plan.” This plan is not a ceasefire; it is the institutionalization of apartheid. It leaves settlements intact, strips Palestinians of sovereignty, denies refugees their return, and enshrines Israeli military supremacy. It is, in short, the continuation of genocide by other means—preparing the ground for the next round of ethnic cleansing.
And where are Riyadh and Islamabad? They pound their fists in speeches, but their generals and monarchs have already signaled compliance. The pact offers Washington and Tel Aviv the fig leaf of Muslim legitimacy for a project that leaves Palestinians in permanent chains.
The Real Stakes
What emerges is a bleak but unmistakable picture. The Saudi–Pakistan pact is not about defense diversification or collective security. It is a bargain: Gulf monarchs buy mercenaries, Pakistani generals collect patronage, and Washington gains Muslim endorsement for a regional order of conquest and apartheid.
The victims are not just Palestinians. Yemenis languish under bombs and blockades. Iranians face encirclement and espionage. Ordinary Pakistanis endure economic collapse while their generals grow fat on foreign rents. The pact stabilizes elites while destabilizing societies.
Toward a Real Alternative
The tragedy is not inevitability but choice. There is no natural law demanding that Pakistan’s generals serve Gulf palaces or that Saudi rulers normalize with Israel. These are political choices made to preserve power and privilege.
The alternative is not another military bloc—a so-called “Eastern NATO” or “Muslim NATO.” It is demilitarization, redistribution, and solidarity. It is building institutions to protect the vulnerable instead of palaces, and normalizing justice instead of apartheid.
This will not come from monarchs or generals, whose survival depends on empire. It will come, if at all, from below: from workers, students, women, and the dispossessed, who still chant for Palestine and resist the theater of betrayal.
Complicity in Robes and Khaki
The Saudi–Pakistan pact dresses itself as Muslim unity, but its fabric is woven from complicity. It offers stability only for thrones, bank accounts, and apartheid. For Palestinians forced into an obscene ceasefire, for Yemenis starved, for Pakistanis crushed by their own generals, it offers only more suffering.
If there is to be a genuine pact worth signing, it must be a pact among peoples: to resist empire, to oppose normalization with Zionism, to refuse the regime-change machinery of Washington, and to build a regional order grounded in justice. Anything less is theater. And the audience outside the theater continues to bleed.
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org/), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN – https://nakbaliberation.com/), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE – https://www.theshapeproject.com/).
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