ISLAMABAD: Former Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf urged the government on Friday to improve relationship with Israel to counter arch-rival and nuclear-armed neighbour India, but major political leaders on Saturday shot down the proposal as “wishful thinking.”

Pakistan does not have diplomatic ties with Israel and has been a staunch supporter of demands for a Palestinian state.

Musharraf, a former army chief, resigned as president of Pakistan in disgrace in 2008. He came to power in a bloodless military coup in 1999.

“Israel considers Pakistan a powerful Muslim country and it wants to create a better relationship with Pakistan,” Musharraf said at a press conference in Dubai where he lives in self-exile, hinting that improved ties with Israel could help Pakistan counter India.

Musharraf’s statement comes in the backdrop of heightened tensions between Pakistan and India after last week’s suicide bombing in the disputed Kashmir in which 40 Indian paramilitary troopers were killed. India has accused Pakistan of being involved in the attack but Islamabad denies any complicity.

Outlining his efforts to make contact with Israeli leaders with the help of Turkey in 2005 when he was the president of Pakistan, Musharraf mentioned his address before the American Jewish Congress in New York and said he had spoken his heart out about Israel’s atrocities in Palestine.

“I asked the Turkish president to arrange a meeting with Israeli leadership,” he said. “I got a message from the Israeli prime minister within 24 hours that they are ready to meet anywhere in the world.”

Israel and Pakistan held their first public talks in 2015. They were described as a “huge breakthrough” by then Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, but sparked fury in the Muslim-majority nation of 208 million.

Speaking to an Israeli newspaper in 2012, Musharraf had said Pakistan had “nothing to lose by trying to get on Israel’s good side.”

But on Saturday, major Pakistani politicians rejected Musharraf’s proposal to improve ties with Israel.

“It is just the wishful thinking of a former military dictator … it is against our national interest and against the cause of Palestine to recognize Israel as a legitimate state,” Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Senator Mushahidullah Khan told Arab News.

He said that during his years in power too, Musharraf had tried to establish secret contacts with Israeli leaders but “the move was strongly opposed by the masses.”

“We should urge the international community to play its part in stopping Israel from committing war crimes against Palestinians instead of recognizing it as a separate state,” he added.

Pakistan People’s Party leader Naveed Chaudhry said his party had always opposed the establishment of any diplomatic relations with Israel as “we consider it an illegitimate state.”

“General Musharraf is entitled to have his viewpoint about Israel, but people of Pakistan do not approve the idea,” he told Arab News.

A senior leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of religious political parties, Liaqat Baloch also opposed the proposal and called it a “conspiracy against Pakistan.”

“Who cares about General Musharraf’s advice now, he is a dead horse,” he said. “The Pakistani nation cannot even think of recognizing the state of Israel keeping in view its atrocities against innocent, unarmed Palestinians.”