Direct PH-Israel flights eyed in October

MANILA – Even in the midst of a pandemic, direct flights between the Philippines and Israel might still proceed by the fourth quarter this year through the Philippine Airlines (PAL), according to the Israeli Embassy on Wednesday.

“It’s already scheduled even through the pandemic, PAL was still insisting on having those flights. The new goal is to have them in October, I think that was PAL’s plan,” Embassy Charge d’Affaires Nir Balzam said in a virtual forum.

However, there is still no way of knowing when inbound tourism travel to Israel will be allowed following the spike in its Covid-19 cases.

“Things have changed a bit, we were actually supposed to open our country for tourism. There’s some kind of pilot made with a few countries in May, June, and July. Because of the surge of cases, we had to postpone the pilot of this,” the diplomat said.

But the deployment of Filipino caregivers to Israel under a Philippine-Israel bilateral labor agreement will continue.

“They are welcome. One of the most important things that we did during the President’s visit was the implementation of the bilateral agreement on overseas Filipino workers. It means that there is no more agency or sub-contractors,” Balzam said.

Last July, 48 out of the 377 caregivers who were supposed to be deployed in 2020 were finally able to fly to Israel.

More engagements

Despite the restrictions posed by the global health crisis, Balzam added that Israeli and Filipino authorities are also finding ways to further improve ties, the highlight of which was the visit of Israeli medical experts to Manila recently.

“We’re constantly sharing the information with the Interagency Task Force, with the Department of Health. Again we’re very good friends especially in this time of the pandemic, we’re reaching out,” he said.

Like Manila, Israel is experiencing a surge attributed to the spread of more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus but it tries to avoid imposing lockdowns to keep the economy afloat.

“We do see a surge of cases but we do restrictions and we also see the importance of a third booster for now,” he said.

“One of the options was not to give booster and another option was to give it and (experts) saw that the advantages of giving a booster will be probably better than having more lockdowns or more cases so they saw that it helps a bit so they pushed for it,” he added.

Aside from sharing best practices on battling coronavirus, Israel is also working with the Department of National Defense and the Philippine National Police on defense cooperation.

“(Israel’s defense attaché) is working closely with them on understanding the needs (of the Philippines) and if we can match with Israeli technology in the field of the defense then he’s creating those matching within the government-to-government umbrella,” Balzam said.

The diplomat, however, is hoping the two nations could further strengthen their ties in the areas of trade, agriculture, and renewable energy.