Trump-Arab/OIC Summit Gives Pakistan a Seat in Gaza Diplomacy — Now Islamabad Must Show What That Access Can Deliver
By Shahnoor Saqib | SCN NEWS
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 23, 2025 — Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif joined U.S. President Donald Trump and leaders and senior representatives from seven other Arab and Muslim-majority states at the United Nations on Tuesday for talks centred on ending the Gaza war, placing Pakistan inside a small diplomatic grouping attempting to influence Washington at one of the conflict's most consequential stages. Convened by Trump and co-hosted with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on the margins of UNGA80 High-Level Week, the meeting brought together Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Türkiye, Indonesia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Participants called for an end to the war, an immediate ceasefire linked to hostage releases, sufficient humanitarian access, rejection of forced Palestinian displacement and a comprehensive framework for Gaza's reconstruction and stabilization. For Islamabad, however, the significance extends beyond another statement of solidarity with Palestinians: Pakistan has moved from addressing Gaza primarily through public diplomacy into a smaller negotiating circle with the U.S. president, creating a harder test of whether diplomatic access can be converted into influence.
The composition of the room is important. Qatar has served as a central mediator in negotiations involving Israel and Hamas; Egypt borders Gaza and has been indispensable to ceasefire and humanitarian discussions; Jordan has direct security and political interests in the Palestinian question; Saudi Arabia and the UAE carry substantial regional weight; Türkiye has maintained an assertive diplomatic position on Gaza; and Indonesia represents the world's largest Muslim-majority population. Pakistan entered that group without the geographic leverage of Gaza's neighbours or Qatar's established mediation role. Its presence therefore reflects a different form of diplomatic relevance — its political weight within the Muslim world, its longstanding position on Palestine and its ability to engage Washington while maintaining relationships across the Arab and wider Islamic bloc.
That makes the meeting a revealing test of Pakistan's evolving foreign policy. Islamabad has consistently supported an independent Palestinian state and condemned the humanitarian toll in Gaza, but declarations at the UN are different from participation in a process attempting to shape what happens next. The joint statement indicates that Tuesday's discussion moved beyond calls for a ceasefire into questions of stabilization, reconstruction, Palestinian governance and security arrangements. Participants backed reconstruction based on the Arab and OIC plan, expressed support for Palestinian Authority reform and said international assistance should support Palestinian leadership. These are precisely the issues that become decisive if diplomacy succeeds in stopping the fighting: who governs Gaza, who finances reconstruction, what security architecture follows and how Palestinians retain political control over their future.
For Pakistan, entering that conversation creates opportunity but also constraint. Islamabad can reinforce a collective Muslim position more effectively from inside a coordinated diplomatic group than through an isolated national statement. Yet Pakistan is not a direct mediator between Israel and Hamas, does not recognize Israel and possesses limited independent leverage over the principal actors. Its influence will consequently depend on coalition diplomacy — strengthening common positions among states that individually possess different forms of leverage and helping ensure that Washington hears those positions as a coordinated demand rather than a collection of parallel objections.
The meeting's engagement with Trump is especially consequential because the United States retains extraordinary leverage over the trajectory of the Gaza conflict. Arab and Muslim leaders can mobilize diplomatic pressure, humanitarian resources and reconstruction financing, but Washington's relationship with Israel gives the U.S. president a role none of the participating Muslim-majority governments can replicate. The strategic calculation behind Tuesday's meeting is therefore straightforward: if the objective is to alter conditions on the ground, engagement with Washington is unavoidable even where profound disagreements remain over U.S. policy.
For Pakistan, this requires a more complicated diplomatic posture than denunciation alone. Islamabad must preserve its established support for Palestinian self-determination while participating constructively in discussions with a U.S. administration whose cooperation would be essential to any viable ceasefire or post-war arrangement. Effective diplomacy often requires precisely this tension — engaging the actor with the greatest capacity to change an outcome even when that actor's policies are among those being challenged.
The joint statement's rejection of forced displacement is particularly significant. Palestinian displacement has become one of the most sensitive issues surrounding proposals for Gaza's future because Arab and Muslim governments fear that temporary wartime movement could become permanent demographic change. Tuesday's participants explicitly reiterated the need to reject forced displacement and permit the return of those who had left. For Pakistan, that position is consistent with its broader argument that any settlement must preserve Palestinian political rights rather than resolve the humanitarian crisis by moving Palestinians elsewhere.
The discussion of reconstruction creates an equally difficult question. Gaza will require enormous rebuilding if the war ends, but reconstruction without an agreed political settlement risks reproducing a cycle in which infrastructure is rebuilt only to be destroyed in another conflict. The leaders therefore linked reconstruction with stabilization, security arrangements and Palestinian leadership. That linkage matters because the post-war debate is no longer simply about who will pay for rebuilding Gaza; it is about what political architecture prevents reconstruction from becoming preparation for the next war.
Pakistan's role in that architecture is likely to be diplomatic rather than operational, but even that can carry significance if Islamabad remains part of a sustained process. The joint statement described Tuesday's meeting as the beginning of a process and stressed maintaining momentum toward peace and regional cooperation. That language establishes the standard against which the meeting should eventually be judged. A photograph of Muslim leaders with the U.S. president is politically valuable; a continuing negotiating mechanism capable of affecting ceasefire terms or post-war planning would be strategically valuable.
There is also a broader Pakistan-U.S. dimension. Relations between Islamabad and Washington have repeatedly moved between close security cooperation and periods of distance. Pakistan's participation in Trump's Gaza discussions demonstrates that the relationship can operate on issues beyond bilateral security or South Asia. If Islamabad becomes useful to Washington in consultations involving the wider Muslim world, that can create diplomatic channels whose value extends beyond Gaza.
Pakistan must nevertheless avoid overstating what participation means. A seat at a meeting is not evidence that Islamabad controls the outcome. The decisive parties to the conflict and the states with direct negotiating leverage remain elsewhere. Diplomatic credibility requires distinguishing access from achievement — particularly when domestic audiences can interpret photographs with major leaders as evidence of influence that has not yet been demonstrated.
That distinction is central to Shahnoor's UNGA80 test for Pakistan.
The first stage is visibility: being invited into consequential discussions.
The second is access: having Pakistan's position heard directly by the actors capable of affecting an outcome.
The third — and most difficult — is influence: whether anything changes because Pakistan was there.
Tuesday's meeting clearly advances the first two. The third remains unproven.
Pakistan's Security Council membership adds another dimension. Islamabad is serving an elected 2025-26 term on the Council, giving it a formal platform on international peace and security alongside its political engagement with Arab and Muslim states. Pakistan can therefore operate simultaneously through the universal UN system, the OIC framework and smaller diplomatic coalitions. That combination potentially gives Islamabad more avenues for influence than it possessed during an ordinary General Assembly appearance.
But institutional access also creates expectations of consistency. Pakistan's arguments over civilian protection, humanitarian access, self-determination and international law in Gaza will carry greater credibility if Islamabad applies comparable principles across other conflicts. States seeking influence inside multilateral institutions are judged not only by the causes they champion but by whether the principles underlying those causes survive when political alignments change.
The Gaza meeting also illustrates a broader shift in contemporary diplomacy. Large multilateral institutions remain essential for legitimacy, but breakthroughs often emerge through smaller groups operating alongside them. UNGA High-Level Week functions increasingly as a diplomatic marketplace where formal speeches occur in the General Assembly while potentially consequential negotiations take place in rooms nearby. For middle powers such as Pakistan, the ability to enter those smaller rooms can matter as much as the visibility of the national address.
That does not diminish the UN's role. The meeting itself occurred at United Nations Headquarters during UNGA80, demonstrating how the General Assembly's annual gathering creates opportunities for diplomacy that the formal debate alone cannot provide. The UN brings the actors into the same city and often the same building; smaller coalitions then attempt to resolve questions the full membership cannot negotiate in real time.
Pakistan's challenge is to use that environment strategically. Gaza offers Islamabad an issue on which its domestic political consensus, longstanding foreign-policy position and relationships across the Muslim world broadly align. That is relatively unusual in foreign policy, where internal politics and external interests frequently pull governments in different directions. The diplomatic opportunity is therefore significant — but so is the danger of mistaking rhetorical alignment for negotiating leverage.
The clearest measure will come after New York. If Tuesday's meeting develops into sustained coordination with Washington and participating Arab and Muslim governments, Pakistan's inclusion may prove to have been the beginning of a meaningful diplomatic role. If the process stalls and Gaza's humanitarian catastrophe continues without political movement, the meeting risks becoming another example of high-level diplomacy unable to alter conditions it was convened to address.
The leaders themselves appear to recognize that danger. Their joint statement emphasized maintaining momentum and described the meeting as a starting point rather than an outcome. That is a more realistic standard than declaring diplomatic success after one discussion.
For Pakistan, the significance of the Trump meeting is therefore not that Shehbaz Sharif sat at the same table as some of the most influential actors in Gaza diplomacy. It is that Islamabad has been given an opportunity to demonstrate what it can do once it reaches that table. UNGA80 has moved Pakistan from the podium into a smaller negotiating room. The next test is whether its voice inside that room helps move anything outside it.