Thirty-seven Filipinos who fled war-torn Gaza are arriving in the Philippines today (Friday), ending their month-long ordeal of waiting to escape the heavy bombardment of the Palestinian enclave.
Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary Eduardo Jose de Vega said 37 of the 40 Filipinos who were able to cross to Egypt from Gaza on Tuesday will arrive at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport this afternoon via Qatar Airways. They are joined by a Palestinian, who is the spouse of one of them.
Two of the Filipinos will remain in Egypt because they have Egyptian husbands and are trying to get permanent residency there, while the other is 38 weeks pregnant, De Vega said.
“Although she has medical clearance to fly, we’re not sure she’ll be allowed to board. In that case, they will take care of her while she remains in Egypt,” De Vega said.
Before the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, there were 137 Filipinos in Gaza. Two of them, medical workers belonging to the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, managed to depart on Nov. 1 during the first border opening.
As of Thursday, there are still 95 Filipinos in Gaza, De Vega said.
He said 19 of them still do not want to leave despite Israel’s continued bombardment of the territory that has reportedly claimed the lives of about 10,000 people there.
De Vega said the government expects more Filipinos will be willing to be repatriated after the authorities allowed their Palestinian spouses to join them.
The Filipino repatriates will be given assistance by the Philippine government once they arrive in the country. De Vega believed they will not permanently stay in the Philippines and will want to return to Gaza once hostilities end.
The border opening did not come smoothly. It took time before the opening of the humanitarian corridor was granted by concerned governments, particularly by Israel and Egypt, and it was postponed twice on Sunday and Monday. With AFP
As of Wednesday, at least 131 Filipinos from other countries or areas affected by the Israel-Hamas war either have already been repatriated by the Philippine government or are set to be repatriated.
A big number of them — 102 at last count — came from Israel.
Meanwhile, nine Filipinos from Lebanon, where Israel is battling the terrorist group Hezbollah, have already arrived in the country and 18 more are coming.
The Philippine government repatriated on Wednesday two Filipinos from the West Bank, another Palestinian territory separated from Gaza after they already arrived in the neighboring country of Jordan.
Four Filipinos were confirmed dead following Hamas’ surprise assault on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians. Two remain missing and are believed to have been taken as hostages by the Hamas terrorists.
“Supposedly, there are international negotiations on their release. I cannot confirm or comment,” De Vega said.
The DFA official also said that Palestinian spouses of Filipinos are allowed to go back to the Philippines with their families.
De Vega said they can provide a visa to the Palestinian spouses of Filipinos should they decide to do so.
He appealed to all Filipinos still in Gaza to prepare to cross the Rafah border once they are allowed to do so.
The government has a repatriation fund of about P16 million on standby to cover the last Filipino who will decide to return to the Philippines, De Vega said.
Fighting rages on
Israeli air strikes pounded Gaza City Thursday as soldiers battled street-by-street with Hamas terrorists, and tens of thousands of Palestinians desperate for safety fled their homes southwards in the besieged territory.
After more than a month of intense bombardment, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in a “dire humanitarian situation” in urban battle zones without enough food and water, the United Nations said.
Broken palm trees, distorted road signs, and twisted lamp posts marked the ruins of what was once north Gaza’s main arterial route, a journalist saw while embedded with Israeli soldiers.
Israeli flags were flying over buildings at beach resorts in northern Gaza and there was little sign of any human presence amid the destruction.
The utter devastation came as Israel pressed an offensive launched in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7 that killed 1,400 people in Israel, mainly civilians, in the worst attack in Israel’s history.
The terrorists also took about 240 people hostage, among them babies and elderly people.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed more than 10,500 people, many of them children.
The intense combat and the densely populated coastal territory being effectively sealed off have led to increasingly dire conditions for civilians.
Tom Potokar, chief surgeon at the International Committee of the Red Cross, described the scene at the European hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza as “catastrophic.”
“In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen three patients with maggots in their wounds,” Potokar said.
A rare delivery of emergency medical supplies reached Gaza City’s main Al-Shifa hospital on Wednesday, just the second since the war began, the UN and World Health Organization said, warning it “far from sufficient to respond to the immense needs”.
Hostage negotiations
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected a ceasefire unless the hostages Hamas holds in Gaza are released.
According to a source close to Hamas, talks are underway for the release of 12 hostages, including six Americans, in return for a three-day ceasefire.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Washington has a way to communicate with Hamas but said giving details would jeopardize the process.
“We’re doing everything we can to get these folks back with their families,” he said.
The United States has backed Israel’s rejection of a ceasefire, and G7 foreign ministers in Japan said Wednesday they supported “humanitarian pauses and corridors.”
As the war intensifies, discussions on the possible future of Gaza once the conflict ends have also grown after Netanyahu this week said that Israel would assume “overall security” of the territory.
Kirby said Wednesday that it was plausible that “for at least some period of time” Israeli forces would remain in Gaza “to manage the immediate aftermath and security situation.”
Israel seized Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War and withdrew in 2005. Two years later, Hamas took control and Israel imposed a crippling blockade.
In the longer term, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suggested the Palestinian Authority — which exercises limited autonomy only in parts of the occupied West Bank — should retake control of Gaza.
“It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken said on Wednesday, repeating the long-standing US call for a two-state solution.
But senior Hamas member Ezzat al-Reshq gave short shrift to the suggestion.
“All the powers of the world together would not be able to impose its conditions or its puppets” on the Palestinians, he wrote in a message on Telegram.
‘Let me take him home’
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, with its soldiers targeting their deep network of tunnels and underground bases while air-dropping leaflets and sending text messages ordering civilians in northern Gaza to flee south.
The army said 50,000 people had fled their homes in the main battle zone of northern Gaza on Wednesday, a sharp increase in numbers from earlier this week, adding to the more than 1.5 million people already seeking safety in the south of the coastal strip.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirmed the figure and warned that conditions were “dire” in battle zones north of the central Wadi Gaza district. — With AFP
