Pakistan, May 16 -- There are some questions in international politics on which silence becomes complicity and neutrality becomes cowardice. Palestine is one of them. For Pakistan, Palestine has never been a fashionable slogan, a seasonal outrage or an issue to be remembered only when Gaza burns on television screens. It has been a matter of principle, law, faith, history and national honour.

Pakistan's position is clear and it must remain clear. There can be no durable peace in the Middle East without the establishment of an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state on the basis of pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. This is not street rhetoric. This is Pakistan's stated diplomatic position, rooted in inte...