We join the families of some 30,000 overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Israel and our countrymen in watching developments in the conflict-ridden southern region near the Gaza Strip.
There are now unofficially more than 2,000 people killed – 1,500 bodies of Hamas militants and 700 Israelis – and the toll is likely to increase, with 2,600 injured, after the surprise weekend assault by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Initial reports said Israeli retaliatory strikes on Gaza targets killed 687 people and wounded another 3,727, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
On Monday the militants threatened to execute their hostages if Israeli strikes continued “targeting” Gaza residents without warning.
The threat followed Israel’s imposition of a total siege on the Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water and electricity supplies, and sparking fears of an increasingly dire humanitarian situation.
Now, Philippine officials are waiting for a safe space – where there are no bullets being fired – to repatriate Filipinos from Israel, reported to have reeled from an unprecedented ground, air and sea attacks.
Department of Migrant Workers officer-in-charge Hans Leo Cacdac has said funds and personnel are on standby, while stressing that repatriation is a “mass effort” which would require Filipinos to travel to the airport.
For now, the Israeli Homefront Command has advised residents to stay indoors and Cacdac himself said if the Filipinos should hear a siren wailing the Filipinos should find a bomb shelter and stay safe.
Cacdac said this is not a safe time for mass repatriation.
The Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv has also reported to the home office that six Filipinos, without saying where they lived and worked or where they may have been taken, are unaccounted for and are feared to have been held hostage by Hamas.
Filipino officials have said repatriation will commence once it secures “full clearance” from the Israeli government and the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs.
Like other Filipinos, we are on tenterhooks and are watching warily developments in the area, nearly 9,000 kilometers away.
Hamas, founded in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian refugee living in Gaza, has always espoused violence as a means to liberate occupied Palestinian territories.
It has called for the annihilation of Israel, founded in 1948, and Hamas has carried out suicide bombings and over the years fired tens of thousands of increasingly powerful rockets from Gaza into Israel.
Israel is regarded by Jews, Christians and Muslims as the biblical Holy Land, with its most sacred sites in Jerusalem. Within its Old City, the Temple Mount complex includes the Dome of the Rock shrine, the historic Western Wall, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
