The Philippines and Israel are exploring “more avenues of cooperation”—including a possible free trade agreement, direct flights between the two countries, and cybersecurity agreements—that will improve the “bond” that has been going strong since World War II, Israel Ambassador to Manila Dana Kursh said on Monday, Oct. 27. (MB video by Raymund Antonio)
00:00In the past two years, we had our foreign minister in June 23, our tourism minister in December 24, and our economic minister in July of this year, 2025, and just two weeks ago, on 19th of January, we had our deputy foreign minister.
00:28That shows that the Israeli government thinks very highly of the Philippines, because it's working top-down. Our prime minister said, look east, and he specifically said also the Philippines, and our ministers are coming here to explore more avenues of cooperation.
00:47So this is one time that it relies on the past, and it looks at the present, and if I'm looking at the future, there are two things that are important.
00:58One thing is that our economic minister, together with DTI, Secretary Roker, they launched an FTA, starting discussion of building the mechanism of how we can have more business-to-business.
01:15So hopefully there will be a free trade agreement. We are now just finalizing things, so we initially started in July, and then, when it's done, the potential of bond between the two nations will come even more.
01:28So this is one important component. And the other component that we had also discussed is, hopefully, an establishing of direct flights between the Philippines and Israel.
01:39Because the potential of tourism is very big, and the fact that I meet every Filipino in the streets, and once they know that I'm from Israel, they will say,
01:47Oh, I've been seven times, or I'm planning to go. It's been my dream. I do hope that more and more Filipinos will come to Israel, and vice versa.
01:56More and more Israelis will come to more than 7,000 mini-paradises that we have in the Philippines.
02:02So it's both business and both tourism, and we need to provide to our nations, to both our next generation, and that is looking to the future.
02:13We need to provide them food security, and we need to provide cyber security, and we need to provide them with health, with mental health and physical health.
02:23And in all those realms and more, Israelis and Filipinos can work together to have a better future for everyone, and to exchange best practices.
02:32When it comes to innovation and technology, Israel has some added value. The Philippines has added value.
02:37We need to match them and to do a win-win of both our capabilities to have a better world for our lives.
02:45We need to match them and to do a win-win of both our capabilities to have a better world for our lives.
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