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Pakistan to send COVID-19, medical emergency aid to Palestine after Israeli attacks

A member of the Palestinian Abu Dayer family receives treatment at the Al-Shifa hospital after the death of family members in an Israeli air strike on the family's home in Gaza City on May 17, 2021. (AFP)
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Updated 19 May 2021
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Pakistan to send COVID-19, medical emergency aid to Palestine after Israeli attacks

  • Pakistan says contacting various nations to gather support against Israeli attacks on Palestine
  • Foreign minister Qureshi en route to New York to address emergency UNGA session on crisis in Palestine
Updated 19 May 2021
Muhammad Ishtiaq

ISLAMABAD: Information Minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain has said Pakistan would send aid to Palestine to help the country deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the “medical emergency situation” created by ongoing Israeli air strikes.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Tuesday Islamabad was reaching out to different countries including Palestine, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia and others, to gather support to stop worsening Israeli attacks against Palestine.
Qureshi arrived in Turkey on Tuesday from where he will fly to New York to attend and address an emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Palestine, Pakistan’s permanent mission to the UN said. 
“Palestine is facing a medical emergency situation and Pakistan will send aid,” Hussain told reporters on Tuesday. 
Meanwhile, Radio Pakistan reported that Qureshi, who is in Turkey, had said “contacts are being established with different countries to get stopped the Israeli persecution of Palestinians.”
In a meeting with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara, Qureshi exchanged views on the “worsening situation” in the Palestinian territories. 
“The two Foreign Ministers discussed ways to mobilize the international community to help stop Israeli aggression against the Palestinians,” Pakistan’s foreign office said, adding that the international community had a “collective responsibility” to ensure necessary steps were taken to restore peace and facilitate a just solution. 
The statement added that the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Turkey, Palestine and other countries, would be traveling to New York to participate in-person in a meeting of the UN General Assembly on the Palestine issue. 
Michael Kugelman, South Asia senior associate at the Wilson Center, wrote on Twitter about Pakistan’s efforts to galvanzie world opinion against Israel: 
“Who’s been a real busy diplomat since the Gaza crisis broke out? Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Pakistan’s FM has spoken w/his Palestinian, Egyptian, Saudi, Afghan, Chinese, and US counterparts. He also made a strong statement to OIC. Now enroute to Turkey and on to US for UN meetings.” 

On Monday, the United States for a third time prevented the United Nations Security Council from issuing a public statement on the Israeli assault as the White House said it was pursuing “quiet, intensive diplomacy.” 
For the past week Washington, a strong ally of Israel, has been isolated on the 15-member council over its objection to a public statement by the Security Council on the worst violence between Israel and the Palestinians in years because it worries it could harm behind-the-scenes diplomacy.
Gaza medical officials say 217 Palestinians have been killed, including 63 children, and more than 1,400 wounded since the fighting began on May 10. Israeli authorities say 12 people have been killed in Israel, including two children.
“On the special instructions of PM Imran Khan, the FM Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi will speak at @UN General Assembly #UNGA debate on “The situation in the Middle East” & the “Question of Palestine” on 20 May 2021,” Pakistan’s permanent mission to the UN said in a Twitter post on Tuesday.

“The Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will hold meetings with various dignitaries in NewYork. He will hold talks with local & int’l media representatives & present Pakistan’s views on the situation in #Palestine.” 

“Pakistan joins hands with Palestine, Sudan and Turkey to address an emergency session on #Palestine called by the United Nations General Assembly. Pakistan stands firmly with the people of Palestine.” 

Pakistan’s lower house of parliament on Monday passed a unanimous resolution against what FM Qureshi called the ‘unconscionable brutality’ of Israel against Palestinians. 
“Today in Parliament proud to present a resolution, unanimously adopted, in support of #Palestine, condemning Israeli’s unconscionable brutality & reaffirming Pakistan support for a two-state solution,” the foreign minister said in a tweet. 

The country’s National Assembly suspended its routine agenda to discuss ongoing Israeli airstrikes in which over 200 Palestinians have died so far. 
The lower house passed a resolution calling upon the United Nations Security Council to ensure Israel immediately stop ongoing crimes against Palestinians and “establish an independent inquiry tribunal to investigate the crime of genocide by the apartheid Israeli regime.” 
The parliament also urged the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to take “immediate decisive steps” for the protection and safety of the Palestinian people and break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza in order to provide humanitarian assistance.

Topics: Palestine East Jerusalem violence Israel Pakistan aid to Palestine

Pakistan’s Afghan salvo risks turning ‘open war’ into long crisis

Updated 3 sec ago
Reuters
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Pakistan’s Afghan salvo risks turning ‘open war’ into long crisis

  • Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft
  • But the Taliban have the option to lean on insurgent groups like the TTP and the BLA to move beyond border skirmishes
Updated 3 sec ago
Reuters

KARACHI: Weeks after the Taliban’s lightning offensive in 2021 wrested control of Afghanistan from a US-led military coalition, Pakistan’s then intelligence chief flew into the capital Kabul for talks, where the serving lieutenant general told a reporter: “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”

Five years on, Islamabad — long seen as a patron of the Taliban — is locked in its heaviest fighting with the group, which Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif described on Friday (February 27) as an “open war.”

The turmoil means that a wide swathe of Asia — from the Gulf to the Himalayas — is now in flux, with the United States building up a military deployment against Afghanistan’s neighbor Iran even as relations between Pakistan and arch rival India remain on edge after four days of fighting last May.

At the heart of the conflict with Afghanistan is Pakistan’s accusation that the Afghan Taliban provides support to militant groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), that have wreaked havoc across inside the South Asian country.

The Afghan Taliban, which has previously fought alongside the TTP, denies the charge, insisting that Pakistan’s security situation is its internal problem.

The disagreement is a reflection of starkly incompatible positions taken by both sides, as Pakistan expected compliance after decades of support to the Taliban, which did not see itself beholden to Islamabad, analysts said.

“We all know that the government in Pakistan supported the Taliban, the Afghan Taliban for many years, in the 90s and the 2000s, and provided havens to them during the period where the US and NATO were in Afghanistan.

So there’s a very close relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan,” said Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh and an Afghanistan expert.

“It’s really surprising and shocking to many of us to see how quickly this relationship deteriorated,” she said.

Although tensions have simmered along their rugged 2,600-km (1,615-mile) frontier for months, following clashes last October, Friday’s fighting is notable because of Pakistan’s use of warplanes to hit Taliban military installations instead of confining the attacks to the militants it allegedly harbors.

These include targets deep inside the country in Kabul, as well as the southern city of Kandahar, the seat of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to Pakistan military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry.

The clashes are unlikely to end there.

“I think in the immediate aftermath, I think hostilities will subside. There will be, I hope there will be a ceasefire through mediation. But I do not see these tensions subsiding in the foreseeable future,” said Abdul Basit,  an expert on militancy and violent extremism at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft, several thousand armored fighting vehicles and artillery pieces.

Across the border, the Afghan Taliban has only around 172,000 active military personnel, a smattering of armored vehicles and no real air force.

But the battle-hardened group, which took on a phalanx of Western military powers in 2001 and outlasted them, has the option to lean on insurgents like the TTP and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), moving beyond border skirmishes.

Based in Pakistan’s largest and poorest province of Balochistan that borders both Iran and Afghanistan, the BLA has been at the center of a decades-long insurgency, which in recent years has staged large coordinated attacks.

Pakistan has long accused India of backing the insurgents, a charge repeatedly denied by New Delhi, which has retained a robust military deployment along the border since last May.

Although a raft of countries with influence — including China, Russia, Turkiye and Qatar — have indicated an openness to help mediate the conflict, all such efforts have been met with limited success so far.

Topics: Pakistan Afghanistan tensions Pakistan Afghanistan conflict

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