DFA not certain Palestinian family members of Filipinos can leave Israel if repatriated
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is not certain if Palestinian family members of Filipinos will be allowed to leave Israel in case of possible repatriation.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Eduardo De Vega explained that because of the situation Palestinian nationals are restricted.
"They are married to Filipinas. Under our laws, immigration laws, they (Palestinians) can go to the Philippines. So far, we have not indicated that we will not allow them to come back, to enter the Philippines. The issue is, will they be allowed to leave Gaza either by the local officials or the border, either in Egypt or Israel?" he said.
"Our citizens, they can feel confident that for humanitarian reasons, they will be allowed to leave because they are not combatants or they are not part of the conflict. So, I cannot answer that now, but we are not preventing them from flying home to the Philippines with their wives if we are able to extract them," he added.
Despite the confirmed death of two Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) De Vega said the DFA is not recommending mandatory repatriation of Filipinos from the conflict area but noted that Alert Level Two was raised which restricts the deployment of OFWs to Israel.
"The embassy has not recommended it because mandatory repatriation or Alert Level Four is called when the country has broken down and the rule of law and everything about peace and order has broken down... throughout the country. that is not the case in the state of Israel," he said.
"The situation has turned to a certain sense of normalcy as the Ambassador and his team have indicated. However, Israel now, by decision of Foreign Ministry, is under Alert Level 2, meaning, restricted deployment. We’re not going to deploy new workers which is actually a status quo anyway because we still have to negotiate the agreement about caregivers and about the hotel workers by a G2G (government-to-government) agreement and right now there is no deployment," he added.
On the other hand, the Armed Forces of the Philippines assure that the military is "prepared to execute evacuation operations should '' a need arise.
"We will be sending two aircraft, C-130 aircraft and one C-295 and we have already identified the Adana Sakirpasa Airport in Turkey as the temporary safe haven. From there we will be shuttling Filipinos who are affected by the conflict with the identification of Haifa Airport and in Tel Aviv, the Ben Gurion Airport," AFP spokesman Col. Medel Aguilar said.
"All of these will only be executed based on the recommendation or instruction coming from other government authorities," he added.
De Vega said so far there are no Filipinos asking for repatriation from Israel while the number of request from Gaza reached to 70.
"I believe yesterday, I said there were about 38; according to Ambassador Wilfredo Santos, there are now 70. So, we haven’t repatriated them yet because as I said yesterday, there is blockade in Gaza, and their borders both through Israel and to Egypt," he said.
De Vega said the Philippine government is "using diplomacy along with other countries in order to have the borders open" and help Filipinos.
"We can help countrymen and women, go through the border and if there is a need of an evacuation. If not commercial flights, the AFP as announced, will be able to fly them home," he said.
"If they pass through the Egypt border, if they are able to pass the Egypt border, our embassy in Cairo will fly them home on commercial flight. Remember there are 70, it may increase. These are Filipinas married to Palestinians, they are in Gaza; but in Israel, no evacuation is required yet but our AFP is ready," he added. Robina Asido/DMS
