At a certain point in every Middle East briefing, someone says the word peace like it might finally work this time.

In Manila, it’s Israel Ambassador Dana Kursh. She said it during Sukkot in Taguig on Thursday, under a ceremonial canopy meant to symbolize shelter but felt more like a fragile cover under a sky too tired to believe in peace.

“Peace. That’s the end game. There’s no other solution.”

Hours before Kursh’s speech, Israel’s cabinet approved what US President Donald Trump, in his latest messianic turn, called the “Gaza Plan:” a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange to stop a war that has already eradicated an entire generation. 

A ceasefire. A trade: 20 hostages alive, 26 bodies, for thousands of Palestinian prisoners. The gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops. Before dawn the vote passed. In the exhausted language of global diplomacy, this counted as good news.

In Gaza, the humanitarian agencies call it “a famine made by men.” Seventy-thousand dead. Hospitals are gone. Refugee camps reduced to rubble.

The Israeli campaign began as retaliation for Hamas’ 7 October blitz of Southern Israel, where 1,200 Israelis were massacred and 250 hostages taken, four of them Filipino. 

Hamas’ exiled chief, Khalil Al-Hayya, said the US and mediators had “guaranteed the war was over.” Israelis cheered. Palestinians cheered. Everyone seemed to agree that something had ended.

It stopped being regional long ago. Tehran ceased hiding behind its proxy militias and began launching missiles directly at Israel. Britain and France, once among Israel’s most dependable allies, have now formally recognized the State of Palestine, a shift in Western diplomacy and a rare public break with Washington’s line.

“I see the suffering of Palestinian children,” Kursh said, representing a government that has buried more of its children than any state should.

“But both our peoples are being hijacked by those organizations that are robbing us of our hope for peace.”

Israel would pull back in phases. America, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey would play referees.

Everyone else, like Kursh, would pray.

In Manila, the Foreign Affairs department called it a “monumental step.”

Secretary Theresa Lazaro said ceasefires must hold. Children, women, innocent civilians. They must be saved from further violence and healing must begin.

The Philippines is good at that tone: too pure and linear for the world it is describing, the kind of “moral clarity” that can only be spoken from 7,000 miles away, unburned by shrapnel or smoke.

We export compassion the way we export labor. There are 2 million people scattered across the Middle East, ours, tending to the elderly, nurse its wounded, crew its ships.

It is a day off the phone with worry, sending home paychecks from someone else’s crisis. 

The Philippines’ tie to Israel is old and stubborn. Manuel Quezon taking in 1,300 Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Later came shared farms, tech, small practical acts of trust. Now grief: Filipinos dead in the 2023 Hamas attack. 

Manila has kept its embassy in Tel Aviv open throughout. Israel, for its part, speaks warmly of Filipino caregivers and call them “family.” But family is complicated. Especially when one side lives in a war zone.

Kursh has a more practical wish. That the Philippines ease its travel advisory on Israel. 

Level 2, “restriction phase”, has been in place since June, banning new Filipino workers from deployment.

“Israel is safe,” Kursh told reporters, one that sounded as if safety isn’t the absence of danger but the courage to keep the world from winning through fear.

She smiled. The sort that had seen things. “God willing,” she intoned, “with the peace signs getting more and more positive and real, I do hope... more and more Filipinos will come.”

In Israel, nobody rides the bus because nobody’s supposed to; even now, with peace deals inked and the brotherhood of nations congratulating itself, Israelis still hesitate at the bus door.

You drive instead. You check the rearview mirror twice. You leave the radio low in case the siren interrupts the song.

Still, Israelis have learned not to let fear dictate the world. Girls tote long rifles at city squares, balancing iced coffee with the same hand that steadies the barrel. Cafes stay open. The beach in Tel Aviv still fill. People die, then go back to brunch. The living go on living, because the dead would never forgive them if they didn’t.

Because peace, in their part of the world, is less opposite of war than the pause that keeps you alive enough to survive the next one.