- Hamas commander Naji Zaheer met LeT leader Rashid Ali Sandhu in Pakistan's Gujranwala recently
- Zaheer attended a PMML event, considered a Lashkar-e-Taiba political front, as chief guest
- Zaheer has made multiple visits to Pakistan since 2023, engaging with Islamist and terror groups
Pakistan, which has a long history of sponsoring and sheltering terror outfits on its soil, recently became the venue for a meeting between Hamas and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commanders, pointing to a renewed engagement between the Palestinian group and the Islamic terror outfit. Senior Hamas commander Naji Zaheer met LeT commander Rashid Ali Sandhu in Pakistan's Gujranwala during an event hosted by Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), which is widely believed to be the political front of Lashkar.
The meeting has come to light with the emergence of an undated video, which showed Zaheer and Sandhu sharing a stage. According to available information, Zaheer attended the PMML event in Gujranwala as the chief guest. Sandhu, as a cover, is a leader of PMML. The meeting indicates expanding ties between the two US-proscribed terror groups.
Hamas Leader's Pak Links
Zaheer was the same Hamas leader who visited Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in February 2025 along with other Hamas officials, just weeks before the Pahalgam terror attack. During that visit, he addressed an anti-India joint rally alongside Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed commanders.
His engagements in Pakistan date back further. In January 2024, Zaheer visited Karachi, where he addressed the media at the Karachi Press Club. In April 2024, he travelled to Islamabad, where he was felicitated by the Islamabad High Court Bar Association.
Earlier, on October 14, 2023, just a week after the October 7 terror attack in southern Israel, Zaheer visited Pakistan and met Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, chief of the country's largest Islamist political party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam.
On the same day, he addressed the Mufti Mahmood Conference in Peshawar, where Khaled Mashal also participated via video link.
Subsequently, on October 29, 2023, Zaheer was present in Quetta, Balochistan, for the "Al-Aqsa Storm" conference. In November 2023, he again appeared alongside Mashal, who joined via video, at the "Toofan-e-Aqsa" conference in Karachi.
Pak's "Deep State"
These repeated visits and high-profile engagements underline the growing visibility and coordination of Hamas-linked figures within Pakistan, as well as their apparent outreach to Pakistan-based terror and Islamist networks with the active support of Pakistan's deep state.
The videos also come to light as the US Administration expects the Pakistan Army to send its troops for the new stabilisation force to be established in Gaza in the future. Trump's 20-point Gaza plan calls for an international force to oversee a transition period for reconstruction and economic recovery in the war-torn Palestinian territory, decimated by over two years of war.
