At the United Nations in September 2024, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi made Israel an extraordinary offer.

Speaking after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Safadi rejected the notion that Israel was surrounded by neighbours committed to its destruction, as Netanyahu had declared. “We are here, members of the Muslim-Arab committee, mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries,” he said. “And I can tell you here, very unequivocally, all of us are willing to, right now, guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state.”

Safadi then turned Netanyahu’s argument on its head. “The amount of damage this Israeli government has done, 30 years of efforts to convince people that peace is possible, this Israeli government killed it,” he profoundly said.

It was a powerful statement. It was also a sweeping promise.

Less than two years later, it deserves another look. I was skeptical of it from the beginning. Twenty-six of the 57 Muslim countries do not formally recognize Israel. Nearly half of the states supposedly willing to guarantee Israel’s security do not recognize the state whose security they would be guaranteeing.

One of those 57 countries that Safadi speaks of is Pakistan. It is also not an inconsequential member of the group. With more than 250 million people, a strong military, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons, Pakistan is among the most powerful states in the Muslim world. Now its defence minister has described Israel as a threat to the Muslim world and called for Muslim countries to unite militarily against it. This comes the day after Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey established a new security framework in Mecca, under which aggression against one is to be treated as aggression against all.

None of this means that 57 Muslim countries are preparing for war against Israel. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have their own interests and (in the former’s case, unofficial) relationships with Israel, and Pakistan’s rhetoric should not be automatically applied to them. The Pakistani minister’s statement also........

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