South Asian Muslims delegation off to Israel

DUBAI: Another group of prominent Pakistanis has left for Israel to participate in Sharaka Tolerance Programme to be held in Israel this week.

A team of Muslim intellectuals from several South Asian countries, including Pakistan, will gather in Israel for a week-long programme centered around regional and international tolerance, expanding the Abraham Accords, and promoting accurate education about the Holocaust, said Dan Feferman, executive director of Sharaka.

Sharaka is a non-governmental, region-wide project that brings together Arabs, South Asians and Israelis to build mutual understanding and promote peace in

the Middle East through people-to-people engagement and citizen diplomacy. It has branches in the Arab world, Gulf, Israel and Morocco, and members from around the region, as well as the US, Europe, and Pakistan.

The Pakistani delegation includes religious and social leaders, people associated with the fashion industry, intellectuals and journalists. The aim of the trip is to allow the participants to see and explore Israel for themselves, and to transmit what they learn and experience to audiences in Pakistan to help provide information for the important debate underway on whether Pakistan should join the Abraham Accords.

The debate in Pakistan surged after Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke publicly last year about his private meeting with the Pakistani and Pakistani American delegation at his residence in Jerusalem in May 2022.

“I must say, this was an amazing experience, because we haven’t had a group of Pakistani leaders in Israel ever, on such scope,” Herzog said about the civil society activists before an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “That all stemmed from the Abraham Accords.”

Pakistan officially refuses to forge diplomatic ties with Israel until Palestinians get an independent state. That’s long been the case for many Muslim-majority countries. But in 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established relations with Israel and signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords.

It’s worth mentioning here that last time when a Muslim delegation, also including Pakistanis as well as Pakistanis based in the US, visited Israel, they forcefully raised the Palestine issue there and expressed concerns of the Muslim world.