“Pakistan’s Last Jew” flying to Israel echoes in Senate

To learn more about the history of my friend, the so-called “Pakistan’s Last Jew“, you can read the previous article Meeting Pakistan’s “last Jew” Fishel Benkhald.

We received some important update about him from thenews.com.

 

Prime Minister Imran Khan came under criticism in the Senate on Thursday for reportedly allowing a Pakistani Jew to travel to Israel on a Pakistani passport in which it is clearly written that “it is valid for all the countries except Israel”.

On a point of public importance, former chairman Senate Mian Raza Rabbani said that a Pakistani citizen who is a Jew, had been allowed by the Foreign Office to travel to Israel after the Prime Minister Secretariat approved the case. The News had carried the story about Fishel Khalid, 31.

Rabbani contended that the Jew, who is a Pakistani passport holder, had been allowed to travel to Israel despite the fact that the green passport is not valid for Israel, adding, “If so, the PM Office permitted him, as claimed by the Foreign Office and some weeks back, there was a tweet, an Israeli plane landed at Islamabad, stayed for few hours and then left”.

Given the situation and a categorical travel ban to Israel, Rabbani questioned that if there was any such move that Pakistan was contemplating upon softening its position towards Israel, at least the parliament needed to know about it.

Rabbani said, “we have been saying this all along that this parliament is the only place where such major policy decisions and policy shifts, if they are taking place as I’m still giving the benefit of doubt to the story, but it needs to be confirmed”.

He dubbed the issue as highly sensitive and said that it was clearly mentioned that how the Foreign Office and Prime Minister Office had given their nod, allowing the local Jew to travel to Israel.

Rabbani contended that if there was a shift in Pakistan’s foreign policy towards appeasement or there was some back channel diplomacy, which is opened with Israel, the parliament should at least be taken into confidence.

He emphasised, “if the foreign policy of the country is not formulated in the parliament, where else it should be framed? The foreign minister had claimed that foreign policy will be formulated here but we know that it is not framed at the Foreign Office”.

Rabbani said that if the foreign policy was not framed at the Foreign Office, the government should at least take the parliament into confidence if it was going to take such a huge strategic change with regard to the foreign policy.

He called on the Chairman Senate Sadiq Sanjrani to seek a reply from the Foreign Office regarding the controversy, on which the Chairman sought a written clarification from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On this occasion, the Leader of the House, Shibli Faraz seconded Rabbani’s observations, saying there was a restricted clause in the passport, which does not allow a Pakistani national to travel to Israel. He also said there was a need to know under which rule, the Foreign Ministry allowed the Jew to travel to Israel.

To a calling attention by Senator Kabir Shahi for reducing the size of Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) from Rs950 billion to Rs675 billion, the Minister for Planning and Development Khusro Bakhtiar said that in the first PSDP of this government, which would be approved in next fiscal budget in June, Balochistan would be given top most priority.

The minister said that 2017-18 development plan was of Rs800 billion and not of Rs950 billion where Balochistan had some share, which was reduced as fiscal deficit target for 2017-18 of the previous year was 4.6 of the GDP but the government left it at 6.6 percent; hence their budgetary deficit went up by Rs750 billion from the target they had set.

In order to please Balochistan and other parts of the country, during the last month of their government’s five-year tenure, he added, the previous government of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) placed 373 unapproved projects in the PSDP which, if undertaken, could have cost Rs2 trillion to complete the projects.

He went on to say that the contradiction of the previous PML-N government was self-explanatory as it had placed Rs2 trillion projects and allocation was Rs55 billion, which if continued, had taken 40 years to complete these projects. “And the total allocation for Balochistan was Rs7.4 billion. We took a policy decision as we’d no resources and our fiscal deficit had gone up due to which we took a policy decision to streamline things and dropped all the unapproved projects,” he added.

In October 2018, after dropping the projects, he added, the government wrote to all the concerned ministries to prioritise all projects which had been dropped, as it will be included in budget 2019-20.

He maintained that uplift of Balochistan is the top priority of PTI government, adding the previous government had allocated Rs7.4 billion which was a peanut, and the government will announce ten times more development schemes for Balochistan in the next budget.

About government’s priorities for uplift of Balochistan, he said that Western Corridor, DI Khan-Zhob and Quetta-Zhob road projects are some of the major projects which were taken in the 7th Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) held in December last year.

He said that Rs17 billion will be given to lay transmission lines in Makran division and Gwadar coast in the next budget, adding Awaran road which has been under construction since 1990 is also a priority of the government.

The minister said that water is one of the major issues for the backwardness of Balochistan, for which an integrated programme in collaboration with the provincial government will be launched to complete Kachhi Canal project on which Rs80 billion have so far been spent.

Referring to a meeting with Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) – the national space agency – he said that the agency has been directed to identify points through satellite imagery for construction of 100 dams for water catchment.

He said the government is going to launch a programme to run 30000 tube wells in the province to overcome the lines and transmission losses.

Leader of Opposition Raja Muhammad Zafarul Haq and Raza Rabbani stopped State Minister for Revenue Hammad Azhar from responding to some of the issues raised by the opposition senators, saying the minister could only conclude the debate on the mini-budget bill.

This agitated Shibli Faraz, who rose to insist there was no such rule, which bars a minister from speaking during a debate on the money bill. Terming some of the points raised by opposition lawmakers as propaganda against the mini-budget, he said the minister should respond to them on the spot or else it will tarnish the image of the government.

Taking part in debate on the mini-budge, Senator Usman Khan Kakar of PkMAP said that finance minister had benefited the multinational companies and he was promoting their agenda. He said a man who spent his whole life serving multinational companies, had no idea of the country’s economy, due to which he was presenting mini-budget after every three months which should stop, as it just to crush the poor man.

The treasury lawmakers were all praise for the mini-budget, saying the fragile economy which they had been inherited, had finally taken off due to prudent polices of the government. Senator Faisal Javed said that the measures, which the PTI had taken to boost the economy, will bear fruit in years to come.