Sort wheat from chaff

When it comes to an infiltration by enemies of the state, the country can learn a lot from the Israelis.

The Philippines faces a formidable challenge in fortifying its border due to its being an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. It is very vulnerable to intrusion.

Add to that the inefficient law enforcement and an unreliable judiciary, which makes the country a haven for illegal travel.

In the recent raids on Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) hubs in different parts of the country, it was not unusual to find Chinese workers without visas or even passports.

The Bureau of Immigration’s (BI) crackdown is also too late since the foreign communities funded by the POGO operations have become deeply rooted and self-sustaining where BI raids do not matter since the unregistered workers can move from one hub to another.

The method employed by Israel for a similar problem was far more precise in identifying threats to national security amid the war against Palestinian terror groups.

Lately, it has even sought the designation of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as a terrorist organization for abetting the Hamas extremists.

Following Israel’s bombshell allegations against the agency as helping perpetuate the ongoing conflict, several countries, including the United States, suspended funding to the organization.

In recent weeks, however, as hunger in Gaza has grown more acute amid difficulties in the distribution of humanitarian aid, several countries have resumed funding to UNRWA, which has the most established infrastructure in the Strip.

The UN absolved UNRWA but Israel, citing information it gathered, disputed the outcome of an interim report, accusing the multilateral agency of a coverup.

The report, commissioned by the UN and produced by an independent team headed by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found that the agency had mechanisms in place to ensure its neutrality but also deficiencies that must be addressed.

Last January, Jerusalem alleged that 12 of UNRWA’s employees actively participated in Hamas’ 7 October terror onslaught where some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were murdered and 253 mostly Israelis were held hostage.

Israel then produced proof that Hamas’ infiltration into the agency ran far deeper and that some 1,500 employees had active ties to terror groups.

UNRWA was established in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel, when 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes.

It employs 30,000 Palestinians to serve the civic and humanitarian needs of 5.9 million descendants of those refugees in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and vast camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

In Gaza, it is providing shelter to some one million people newly displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas.

Israel has long pushed for UNRWA’s closure, arguing that it helps perpetuate the conflict since it confers refugee status on descendants of those originally displaced around the time of Israel’s War of Independence, unlike other refugee groups around the world.

Peace, thus, will remain elusive to the state if indeed the terror groups are drawing support from the UN through the UNRWA, which is a defeating situation for the Palestinian host nation.

The Gaza conflict has magnified the apparent collusion between the terror organizations and the UN body that places the Israeli government in the difficult position of having to deal with the terrorists and at the same time their broad support from the multilateral organization.

Foreign intrusion in the Philippines is of a bigger magnitude since the suspicion is that agents have penetrated the government down to the local units as Beijing exploits the affinity of Filipinos for those of Chinese lineage who are known for their perseverance in business.

A recent report indicated that the Coast Guard had to decommission a reserve force that was composed mostly of Chinese.

Knowing the enemy is a skill that the country can derive from Israel considering the heightening territorial conflict with China.

The government should solicit help in weeding out the undesirable visitors to the country.