Pakistan’s defense minister threatens ‘illegitimate’ Israel after inking pact with Saudis, Turkey

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/pakistans-defense-minister-threatens-illegitimate-israel-after-inking-pact-with-saudis-turkey/

Khawaja Asif urges Muslims to form ‘united military front’ against Jewish state, which he calls ‘a product of the Balfour Declaration’ while ignoring UK role in his own country’s creation

Khawaja Asif urges Muslims to form ‘united military front’ against Jewish state, which he calls ‘a product of the Balfour Declaration’ while ignoring UK role in his own country’s creation.

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif on Saturday told a news outlet in his country that “Israel is a threat to the entire Muslim world,” and called for “a united military front” against it, just a day after Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a joint defense agreement.

“In the context of Israel, all Muslim countries must unite. I have no doubt about this,” Asif said

“Israel is a product of the Balfour Declaration, which was established in the 1940s as an illegitimate state, and it could pose a direct threat to any of the countries in the region,” he continued, referring to the 1917 British declaration of support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in the Land of Israel, setting the stage for Israeli independence three decades later. Pakistan was similarly established on the basis of a British declaration in 1947, just a year before the founding of Israel.

Asif, who has in the past called Israel “evil and a curse for humanity,” and a “cancerous state,” told the interviewers that his fierce opposition to Israel will not change even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated in this year’s elections, which are set for October 27.

“No matter who comes to power in Jerusalem – whether it’s [former premier Naftali] Bennett or any other leader – the differences are only marginal,” Asif said.

“Their attitude towards the Palestinians and their anti-Islamic mindset will not disappear. They continue to incite Muslim countries against each other,” he charged, “and as long as the Palestinian issue is not permanently resolved, the Islamic world must stand against them as one.”

There was no immediate Israeli reaction to Asif’s threat. After his since-deleted social media post earlier this year labeling Israel “cancerous,” in which he also called “to get rid of European jews [sic],” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his “call for Israel’s annihilation is outrageous,” particularly coming from a member of a government “that claims to be a neutral arbiter for peace,” referring to Islamabad’s role as a mediator in talks between Washington and Tehran on ending the US-Israel war against Iran. Israel is not a party to those negotiations.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It voted against the establishment of modern Israel at the UN in 1947, does not recognize Israeli sovereignty, and says it will not do so until a Palestinian state is established along the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. During a visit to India in 2018, Netanyahu said: “We are not enemies of Pakistan and Pakistan should not be our enemy either.”

That same year, the Mossad spy agency seized a trove of nuclear documents from a Tehran warehouse in 2018, detailing Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons, which reporters from the New York Times who viewed the archive said was carried out with foreign assistance, “Much [of which] was clearly from Pakistan.”

Separately Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the trilateral pact that Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a day earlier is technically the same as NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense agreement, meaning that an attack on any of the three countries would be considered an attack on them all.

In this photo released by the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from left, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan pose for photo prior to their meeting to discuss the Iran war, in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 29, 2026. (Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP)

Speaking to the state-run Anadolu news agency, Fidan said a committee of ministers similar to that within NATO would be formed as part of the alliance, as well as a general secretariat based in Saudi Arabia. Egypt could potentially join the pact once certain technical matters are resolved, he said.

Fidan added the accord was not targeting Iran and declared the safety of commercial ships in the Red Sea was a Turkish interest, therefore requiring Ankara to be involved in a Saudi-led military coalition aimed at thwarting attacks by Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthi rebels.

He stated that the allies would decide through consultations what degree, form, and format of support they would ask for in the event of an attack, but that no country would be considered a threat as long as a member state is not attacked.

Turkey, which has NATO’s second-largest army, has said the pact was open to expansion to other regional countries and did not seek to replace any existing alliances.

“NATO is a giant military alliance where there are 32 countries. We have started here as three countries and we have to take very humble but concrete steps,” Fidan said, adding efforts to finalize the pact had been underway for two years and eight months.

Agencies contributed to this report.