Pakistan on Sunday denied rumors of trade with Israel, after a Jewish businessman tweeted about successfully exporting food samples to Jerusalem and Haifa, The Associated Press reported.
Fishel Benkhald, a Pakistani Jew based in the southern port city of Karachi, went viral for tweeting about his first kosher food shipment to Israel. The two countries do not have diplomatic ties.
“Congratulations to me as a Pakistani. I exported the first batch of Pakistan food products to Israel market,” he wrote last week.
Benkhald shared a video clip showing his visit to an Israeli market. He walks past stalls with containers of dates, dried fruit and spices with product tags in Hebrew.
Pakistan denied having any diplomatic or trade relations with Israel. “There is no change in the policy,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch was quoted as having told media in response to queries about bilateral trade.
Pakistan”s Commerce Ministry said rumors of bilateral trade were “sheer propaganda.”
“Neither do we have any trade relations with Israel nor do we intend to develop any,” it said in a statement quoted by AP.
Pakistan officially backs a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian Arab conflict and has a longstanding position of non-recognition of Israel until an independent Palestinian state is established within the pre-1967 borders and with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.
The two nations have a number of common strategic interests and rumors of a diplomatic breakthrough between the two have been swirling around over the past decade.

Last May, Israel Hayom reported that a delegation of Pakistani nationals, which included Benkhald, visited Israel. According to the article, this was an unofficial delegation.
In 2021, then-Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Quresh made antisemitic remarks during an interview on CNN, when he asserted that Israel has “deep pockets” and “they control media”.