Manila may pull out peacekeepers from Golan

Manila: The Philippines government will ask the United Nations to release some 340 members of a Philippines contingent deployed at the Golan Heights, after one officer and three soldiers were seized last Tuesday by a Syrian rebel group.

“Under the circumstances where our people [at the Golan Heights] are in jeopardy, we may try to get the UN to release them earlier if that is possible,” said Manila’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario.

“As soon as he [President Benigno Aquino] says go [to the recommendation of the foreign affairs office], we will undertake to do that [pull out] as soon as possible,” del Rosario said, adding, the UN peace keeping mission requires a three months’ notice for a contingent’s pullout.

Explaining his recommendation to Aquino, del Rosario said, “The people that abducted our peacekeepers were actually under siege. They are using our people to get themselves out of the situation they find themselves in. That thing is not for us. We don’t want to expose our people any further, any more than we need to.”

Meanwhile, a rebel group, Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade, the target of intensified shelling from Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, said in its Facebook account that the four Filipino UN peace keepers who were taken from harm’s way, near Al Jamlah.

The group also posted on Facebook the photos of the four abducted Filipino peace keepers. Their names were not released.

Israel’s military often fired back when shells from Syria fell into Israel every time that clashes between the Syrian government and opposition rebels get intensified.

The Martyrs also abducted 21 Filipino peace keepers from March 6 to 9.

At the time, the Philippine government already began “taking a second look” at the virtue of deploying Filipino troops to the Golan Heights and other UN controlled areas worldwide, Manila’s foreign affairs’ office spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

However, the plan was not acted upon then, Hernandez recalled.

But the UN has also responded to the Philippine government’s request for a review of the deployment of international peace keepers in the Golan Heights, said Hernandez.

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), composed of 1,000 troops from Austria, India, Morocco, Moldova, and Philippines, including civilian staffers have been posted at Israel’s Golan Heights since 1974.

At the same time, presidential spokesman, Ricky Carandang admitted the legitimacy of del Rosario’s recommendation, but added that Aquino has not yet acted on it.

Earlier, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky gave assurance that the Filipino peace keepers were unharmed by the Syrian rebels, adding, “Efforts are still under way to secure their release.”

All UN peace keepers were moved out from their post near Al Jamlah on Wednesday, said Nesirky, adding this was done due to a prediction of intensified security situation in Syria, way back when 21 Filipino peacekeepers were abducted last March.