There is a type of silence that is louder than any debate in parliament. It is the silence of a government that has already sealed a deal, already shaken hands, and is now watching the room fill up with smoke. Something like that is where Islamabad is today. When Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sat alongside Donald Trump in the opulent halls of Davos on January 22, 2026, and signed alongside him the founding charter of the Board of Peace,¹ Pakistan crossed a threshold. Not the threshold of betrayal, as its critics loudly claim. Not the threshold of courage, as its defenders privately claim. Something rather more complex than that, the threshold of a nation that has opted for the room rather than the street, for the table rather than the crowd, and is now discovering, in considerable pain, that you cannot always have both.
Pakistan at the Table — But on Whose Terms?
The Peace Board, conceived by Donald Trump and launched with great fanfare at the World Economic Forum, is akin to a property tycoon unveiling a new resort. Kushner showed slides of a “New Gaza” with high-end seafront hotels and glass-fronted apartments, a vision that looked more like annexation with better lighting to many Muslims. Trump himself referred to Gaza as “great real estate.”²
Pakistan signed up as one of 19 founding members.¹ It signed up alongside a Muslim grouping comprising Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, and it did so not as an endorsement but as a form of engagement. The Foreign Office said it “hoped that this framework would pave the way for concrete steps towards a permanent ceasefire, enhanced humanitarian assistance, and reconstruction of Gaza,” and looked forward to “taking steps towards advancing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination as enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2803.“³ It was a diplomatic way of entering a highly unwieldy process.
A Charter That Does Not Even Say Gaza
There is no mention of Gaza in the charter of the Board. It describes itself as an organisation to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”, words that can be applied anywhere in the world. Its founding chairman, Donald Trump, has the exclusive right to appoint members and pass resolutions. A country can buy a permanent position for one billion dollars.⁸ There are no Palestinian representatives at the table either. The Palestinian Authority’s permanent observer to the UN in Geneva said that there had been no contact from the Trump administration since the previous year.⁸ This is the structure that Pakistan has chosen to engage in, not reject. Wisdom or madness? A question that Pakistan has not yet fully answered, certainly not honestly.
Eighty Senators, One Voice — But Aimed at Whom?
Back home, the Senate was not about to stay quiet on the issue. On Tuesday, February 24, 2026, the upper house of Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the recent statement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his desire to form a “hexagon of alliances” which would include India as one of its members and by extension, Islamabad, which termed this alliance an “anti-Muslim bloc” and a direct threat to the Muslim Ummah.
The resolution, tabled by PPP senator Palwasha Mohammad Zai Khan and supported by senators from all sides of the political divide, including Leader of Opposition Raja Nasir Abbas, Sherry Rehman, Kamran Murtaza, Hamid Khan, and Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, among many others, was a rare display of bipartisan support in a Senate otherwise marked by political divisions.
What the Resolution Actually Said
The resolution was unambiguous in its wording. The upper house of Parliament “strongly condemns the continued violation of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza by Israel, its blatant disregard of international law, the UN Charter, relevant UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, as well as the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.” It refused any attempt by Israel to alter the legal or historical status of the occupied Palestinian territory, it condemned settlement expansion, it deplored settler violence, and it called for complete withdrawal by Israel from occupied lands. It also targeted specifically the India-Israel relationship when it denounced what it called an “unholy alliance,” meaning Netanyahu’s offer to build closer relations with India and Modi’s visit to Israel the following day to speak to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. As the Senate resolution itself stated, it was reaffirming “historic and unwavering support of the people of Pakistan for the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and for the establishment of an independent, viable, and contiguous State of Palestine, based on pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.” It was passed unanimously. Not one dissenting voice was raised.
The Message Within the Message
The thing about the Senate resolution that nobody quite wants to say out loud is that it wasn’t really aimed at Israel. Israel isn’t reading Senate resolutions out of Pakistan. Netanyahu wasn’t going to change his policy because of a Senate motion out of Islamabad. The message wasn’t aimed at Israel; it was aimed inward, at the government of Pakistan. Timing is everything in politics, and everything is happening at exactly the wrong time for Islamabad. This resolution comes just a few days after PM Shehbaz attended the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington on February 19.⁴ It comes a day before Modi travels to Tel Aviv.¹¹ The Senate isn’t mourning Gaza because it’s Gaza. It’s a message to Islamabad: we see what you signed up for, and we don’t like it. This is the hidden story behind the Board of Peace conundrum: a government that has signed up to a framework it doesn’t entirely like and a Senate that doesn’t like it but won’t demand change.
The Loudest Critics in the Room Have No Exit Plan
PTI has been the loudest voice in opposition to Pakistan’s inclusion. In a statement released on the same day the charter was signed, they said: “We do not accept the Government of Pakistan’s decision to join the Board of Peace. The importance of such a decision requires it to be grounded in constitutional procedures, democratic oversight, and national consensus.”⁶ The accusation hurts, in part, because it is not far from the truth. The cabinet approved the decision in circulation summary form, without a proper session, parliamentary vote, briefing even to the majority of them. The Opposition members of the National Assembly came out of a briefing by the Foreign Office unable to explain even the basics of the deal.⁸
Fazlur Rehman’s Warning and What It Actually Means
The President of JUI-F, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, was even more forthright: how the initiative for peace could include the Israeli PM but exclude the Palestinians, cautioned against disarming the Hamas movement, and accused the US of leaving Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in ruins in the name of peace. “Palestine,” he said, “is facing the same fate.” The decision of the government has also been outrightly rejected by the Jamaat-e-Islami. However, despite all the rhetoric, not a single opposition party has come forward with a viable solution to the withdrawal of the troops. PTI itself is in the middle of a political war for its survival. Its street power may be significant, but it is not likely to override the decision of the government, which has the backing of the military establishment that sat cozily with Shehbaz Sharif in Davos.
President Trump also publicly acknowledged Field Marshal Asim Munir with a thumbs-up at the signing ceremony⁸, something Pakistan’s establishment does not forget so easily.
A Country That Prays for Palestine and Signs with Washington
There is a brutal arithmetic at the heart of this debate that no solution and no press release can change. Pakistan is currently in talks with the IMF, facing FATF pressures, and has limited fiscal room and a high degree of economic dependence on Western markets.¹⁰ A Gallup poll taken after October 7, 2023, found that 91% of Pakistanis aligned themselves with the Palestinians. This is a country that transcends every political and religious spectrum. The ATMs in Pakistan featured donation information for Gaza. The Imams in every mosque mentioned Palestine during Friday prayers. This is a country where solidarity with Palestine is not a political stance. It is a fact of life.
We Could Not Afford Not to Join
And yet this country, facing economic strangulation, chose to sign up with a Trump-led organization that has zero Palestinian representation, a charter that does not even include the word “Gaza,” and a membership criteria that allows countries to by a permanent seat on the council for a billion dollars.² Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal was candid enough in his defense in the National Assembly: “staying out would have exposed Pakistan to criticism for diplomatic isolation.”⁵ It was a confession in disguise of a strategy: we had to join because we could not afford not to.
Policy commentator Noureen Akhtar observes that Pakistan had wanted to present itself as “a responsible international actor” but that “the absence of parliamentary consultation has enabled the opposition and religious parties to present the decision as elite-led, foreign-influenced, and disconnected from popular opinion.”¹⁰ And that is a perception that is difficult to reverse.
Will Pakistan Walk Away?
The answer, of course, is probably not, but not comfortably so either. There is too much at stake for the government to reverse course without a face-saving way out. The military has been on board all along. So have our strategic Muslim allies, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and UAE, which remain on the Board. And then there is the American dimension. This is a country that needs every scrap of goodwill it can get. But it is also a country that will not be able to escape this decision indefinitely.
The Senate resolution of February 24 is a milestone, not a maximum. If Israel continues to flout the ceasefire, if the Palestinian exodus continues, if the Board of Peace widens its scope to include conflicts on our borders, public opinion can change very quickly indeed. Indonesia has already begun to disengage. If Turkey or Saudi Arabia change course, so will Pakistan.
So, for now, Pakistan’s position is this: it’s in the room, it’s advocating for Palestinian statehood, it’s trying to shape a framework it knows is imperfect. Is it principled engagement or comfortable complicity? Well, as always, it depends on what ultimately happens to the Palestinian people. The Senate has spoken. The street has protested. The prime minister has signed and gone home. Islamabad is in the room, it’s on the Board of Peace. But it’s not at peace with that.
