‘Gaza attack, not genocide’

  The continuous bombardment by Israeli forces of Gaza is not genocide, as Israel is only reacting to the war that the terror group Hamas started.

 "Hamas is responsible for the war, nobody else. Israel has to defend itself, and the result, which is everybody suffering now, is because Hamas also has the Islamist ideology to destroy the state of Israel. They will take all the opportunity to implement this ideology, and this is what we saw last 7 October," said Israeli Ambassador to the Philippines Ilan Fluss, in a virtual media briefing on Friday.

Fluss said the goal of the government of Israel remains to infiltrate and destroy all Hamas infrastructure and arrest its members, as "there should be no Hamas in Gaza that can inflict terror on Israel, and secondly to return the hostages home."

 "This is not genocide, as we are hearing. This is a legitimate war of self-defense. We are not targeting civilians, unlike Hamas, as we have called the civilians to move away from the areas of the fighting. There have been different kinds of warnings to minimize and mitigate civilian suffering," he said.

 The Israeli envoy said figures on deaths coming from Hamas were unreliable "as Hamas are liars, even denying the brutal killing that happened last 7 October."

 "When you announce (the report) of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, that means Hamas. They even said we bombed a hospital in Gaza. And after we did a proper analysis of the evidence, it was clear that it was a failed launch of an Islamic Jihad rocket. There were more than 600 failed launches of rockets within Gaza," Fluss said.

 He stressed that Israel is not going to occupy Gaza, as Gaza is for the Palestinians and not for Hamas.

 Earlier, the United Nations, which Fluss slammed for being biased against Israel, said one-third of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip were not functioning at a time when the medical burden is enormous, and some two-thirds of clinics were closed.

 Rick Brennan, UN World Health Organization's Emergencies Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region, has called for more aid to be allowed into Gaza, warning that the lack of medical supplies, food, and fuel would only cause the medical burden to grow increasingly dire.

 Salvaging OFWs

As President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Friday announced that Israel had "promised" that Filipinos in Gaza would be allowed out on "Saturday at the latest," Ambassador Fluss said his government would do its best to pluck them out of war-torn Hamas-controlled Gaza.

 "As our countries have close and friendly ties, we will do everything on our part to facilitate the safe exit of the Filipinos that are in Gaza. We are in a war, and there are also other players in this complicated situation, such as the UN and Egypt. We are also doing everything in our hands to make sure of the safety of the Filipinos living in Israel, the same as we do to our own citizens," Fluss said.

 Asked if the Israeli spouses of Filipinos would also be allowed to leave, the ambassador said, "We are only talking about Filipinos."

Two Filipinos safe

On Thursday, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo Jose de Vega said the two Filipinos connected to Doctors Without Borders in Gaza had crossed the border at Rafah and were now in Egypt waiting for another deployment.

 He said the two are in good physical condition and steady communication with their families in the Philippines.

 The two are in Ariah, an Egyptian city near the Rafah border crossing. They would travel to Cairo before flying to their new countries of deployment, according to De Vega.

Gazan workers out of Israel

 Meanwhile, the Israeli government has announced that it will return Gazans working inside the country to the besieged Palestinian territory, almost four weeks after it began striking Hamas targets there in response to the deadly cross-border attack.

 According to a report by Agence France-Presse, quoting a pronouncement by the Israeli security cabinet, Israel is severing all contact with Gaza.

 "There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza. Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza," the report said, without specifying how many people would be sent back.