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A Pakistani Rapprochement with Israel?
(Ha'aretz) Yossi Melman - Pakistan, which has a population of 140 million, is one of the three most populous Muslim countries in the world (along with Indonesia and Bangladesh). It is currently the only Muslim country in the world that has nuclear weapons. The strengthening of Muslim fundamentalism over the past decade has turned Pakistan into one of the world centers of hatred of Israel and of Jews. The murder of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl by Muslim extremists in Pakistan is one example. In 1952 Pakistan appointed Mohammed Assad deputy head of its UN delegation. Assad was a Jew from Galicia who was born Leopold Weiss, converted to Islam, lived in Saudi Arabia, and had a diplomatic career in Pakistan. Starting in the 1950s, Israel's diplomatic representatives held an unofficial dialogue with Assad-Weiss. Contacts in UN institutions have continued ever since. Some experts in Israel believe President Musharraf's recent call to consider establishing relations with Israel was a trial balloon, designed to test the reaction of the Muslim opposition, and to prepare public opinion in his country for a step that may already have made considerable inroads beneath the surface, in secret contacts between representatives of the two countries.