Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar previously said Islamabad will take no part in disarming Hamas
News Desk - The Cradle
The report comes as Washington has been pressing Islamabad to commit to the ISF plan despite Pakistan signaling it is not willing to participate in disarming the resistance.
Asim Munir, chief of the Pakistani military, “is expected to fly to Washington to meet President Donald Trump in the coming weeks for a third meeting in six months that will likely focus on the Gaza force,” the sources said.
The Pakistani army, foreign office, and Information Ministry did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the White House.
“Not contributing (to the Gaza stabilization force) could annoy Trump, which is no small matter for a Pakistani state that appears quite keen to remain in his good graces – in great part to secure US investment and security aid,” said Michael Kugelman of the Washington-based think tank the Atlantic Council.
Munir became chief of the army earlier this month, heading the air force and the navy, and was granted a job extension until 2030.
He will retain his field marshal title permanently and enjoy lifetime immunity from any criminal prosecution as a result of constitutional amendments approved in late November.
“Few people in Pakistan enjoy the luxury of being able to take risks more than Munir. He has unbridled power, now constitutionally protected. Ultimately, it will be Munir's rules, and his rules only,” Kugelman added.
The military chief has been meeting officials from Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Jordan, Egypt, and Qatar in recent weeks, Islamabad has announced.
Analysts told Reuters that these meetings appeared to focus on the ISF plan.
Pakistani analyst and Senior Associate Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, Abdul Basit, said that Islamist parties in Pakistan could mobilize thousands against the government if things escalated in Gaza between the ISF and the resistance.
“People will say ‘Asim Munir is doing Israel's bidding’ – it will be foolhardy of anyone not to see it coming,” he said.
Pakistan was among the several Muslim and Arab states that signed off on Trump’s ‘peace plan’ for Gaza, a main part of which is the deployment of the ISF.
The country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif praised the US president as a “man of peace” in mid-October after the ceasefire deal came into effect, despite two years of Washington’s full military support for the genocide.
“All Palestinian factions have agreed on a unified position regarding the foreign presence in the Gaza Strip. Their agreement to the presence of any international force is conditional on its mandate being limited to monitoring the ceasefire on the border only,” Hamas official Hussam Badran said in an interview with Russian news outlet Sputnik this week.
Sources told Reuters last week that the ISF could be sent to the besieged Gaza Strip as early as next month.
“The ISF will not fight Hamas. Lots of countries had expressed interest in contributing and officials are currently working out the size of the ISF, composition, housing, training, and rules of engagement,” the sources said.
While the sources claim the ISF will not be tasked with fighting the resistance, Trump’s ceasefire plan stipulated that the international force must enforce the group’s total surrender of all weapons.
Hamas had previously rejected this as an attempt to achieve what Israel could not during the two-year genocidal war.
Multiple reports have emerged in recent weeks revealing significant Arab and regional unease with the idea of being forced to enter into armed clashes in Gaza.
“If the purpose of deploying an International Stabilization Force in Palestine is to disarm Hamas, then we are not ready for that, that’s not our job,” Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, told reporters in Islamabad on 30 November. “That is the job of Palestinian law enforcement agencies.”
“Prime Minister (Shehbaz Sharif) had agreed in principle that we would also send forces, but we will decide only after knowing what the terms of reference, terms of action, and mandate will be. But as per my information, if it will include disarming Hamas, then even my Indonesian counterpart has informally expressed his reservations,” he said.
The minister also said he was present during initial talks on the ISF, when Indonesia pledged to contribute up to 20,000 peacekeeping troops.
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