Elusive peace

Certainly we should push for the humane treatment of Filipinos who are being deported from Sabah. But the government should brace for more problems ahead.

Malaysia isn’t the only country cracking down on illegal aliens. Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 last year in the United States, other countries hosting big populations of foreign workers, including several in the Middle East, have been planning to send home not only illegal aliens but even legitimate workers.

It’s not just because of any terrorist threat, but also because of the slowdown in the global economy. Where there are enough jobs, our workers are facing stiff competition from cheaper labor.

In Sabah, the Malaysian government has taken advantage of its general crackdown on illegal migrants to wipe out communities suspected to serve as havens for criminals. The deportation of Filipinos has been suspended, but Malaysian authorities have announced that the crackdown will continue.

Israel is also planning to send home about 50,000 illegal aliens in the coming months, and Filipinos are sure to be affected. There are an estimated 60,000 Filipinos in Israel, with about half of them believed to be staying illegally.

Even the United States has been rounding up and sending home our "TNTs" (tago nang tago or overstaying Pinoys), placing the deportees in handcuffs on the plane to the Philippines, as we saw earlier this year. This is what we get for being classified as another front in the US-led war on terror. Those with Philippine passports who look like Franklin Drilon are all suspected to be members of the Abu Sayyaf. Frank, they didn’t ask me to take off my shoes in Detroit before my return flight to Manila last May. Did they mistake you for Abu Sabaya?

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Despite the presence here of the Abu Sayyaf, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the renegade forces of Nur Misuari, the ambassador of Israel says she feels relatively safe in our country.

Sure, security is always tight in any event sponsored by the embassy. But no event or visit by any Israeli delegation has ever been cancelled because of security concerns, Ambassador Irit Ben-Abba told STAR editors yesterday.

"I have great confidence in the Philippine police," the forty-something ambassador told us. No, it didn’t sound like she was joking.

Ben-Abba and the handful of Israelis working at the embassy can move around anywhere in the country and are even working with Muslims in Mindanao. Israeli aid to the Philippines is not financial but consists mainly of training programs in several areas including agriculture and, of course, counter-terrorism.

Few Filipinos know that a Jew pioneered textile manufacturing in the Philippines. And few Filipinos know that our country was among the first to recognize the creation of Israel half a century ago. To this day several Arab countries as well as our predominantly Muslim neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia have no diplomatic relations with Israel. When the ambassadors of those Arab countries run into the Israeli envoy at public functions, they ignore her.

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For several months after 9/11 Filipinos became interested in the conflict in the Middle East, following closely each deadly bombing in Israel and retaliation by Israeli troops in the Palestinian territories. My Israeli friend, who lives in southern Israel, e-mailed me about his children’s friends getting blown up, about how even going to a pizza parlor required courage. My Muslim friends, meanwhile, e-mailed me gory pictures of mutilated and maimed Palestinians.

After a while I guess people just became jaded to all the gory pictures and horror stories from both sides. Call it horror fatigue: if the Israelis and Palestinians want to wipe each other out, there’s nothing we can do about it.

It’s a problem we can’t ignore for long, however.

My Jewish-American friends don’t like linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to 9/11 and the activities of Osama bin Laden. There is no justification for terrorism, they point out.

In the minds of a significant number of Muslims, however, a link has been established. By "significant," I mean enough numbers to provide the necessary support network to sustain international terrorism. Even my moderate Muslim friends say Bin Laden managed to exploit the Middle East conflict to tap into Arab/Muslim resentment against the Jews and the United States.

Now US officials are warning that another terrorist attack, possibly on the scale of 9/11, is possible. And they have also warned that Bin Laden is most likely alive and his terror network intact.

Why should we worry about that? After 9/11 the global economy, already on a downtrend after the dotcom bubble burst, slid further. The travel industry was devastated, and of course that included us. Affected were our hotels, travel agencies, airlines and all the downstream industries.

Because of 9/11 American troops are back in Philippine soil. Because of fears of terrorism in the wake of 9/11 Malaysia announced months ago that it would crack down on illegal aliens, which is why we now have this refugee crisis in our hands.

Because of 9/11 security was tightened in all airports, which is why even our Senate president was required to take his shoes off for inspection at the San Francisco airport before his flight back to Manila.

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I asked Ambassador Ben-Abba about the prospects for peace between her people and the Palestinians. She saw some hope in the month-long lull in Palestinian suicide bomb attacks. Part of the reason Israel is deporting some 50,000 illegal aliens, she said, was in preparation for the arrival of Palestinian workers once some form of peace agreement is forged. This alone is enough reason for us to follow closely developments in the Middle East.

Ben-Abba didn’t seem worried about the prospect of the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu returning to power soon. I read a book by Netanyahu, updated after 9/11, which argued that the Arabs would settle for nothing less than driving all Israelis into the sea, and that any Palestinian peace effort was meant chiefly to buy time to achieve that ultimate aim: the destruction of Israel.

Ben-Abba, however, pointed out that despite the hawkish rhetoric, Netanyahu did pursue peace initiatives during his tenure as Israeli prime minister. And she said latest reports from the Middle East indicated that Palestinians themselves were tired of violence, sick of their ineffectual leader Yasser Arafat, and longing for some normalcy.

We can only hope those reports are accurate.