ISRAEL and the Philippines marked on Monday the 60th anniversary of the signing of their Treaty of Friendship.
Providing a perspective to the momentous day, Israeli Ambassador Effie Ben Matityau shared that “the treaty was signed a few months after the establishment of diplomatic relations, highlighting the fact that it’s not just political bilateral relations: it’s also a people-to-people relations founded on the basis of deep ties bonding our two nations historically.”
On February 26, 1958, then-Philippine Acting Foreign Secretary Felixberto Serrano and Israel’s Head of Mission Daniel Lewin signed the treaty for “perpetual peace [as well as] firm and lasting friendship between the Republic of the Philippines and the State of Israel and between their people.”
“We also commemorate and highlight a year of jubilees between 2017 and 2018: the 80th anniversary of former President Manuel L. Quezon’s Open Door Policy, 70th anniversary to the Philippines’s vote for the United Nations resolution that led to the creation of the State of Israel and, of course, the 70th anniversary of our statehood,” Matityau said.
“We are mounting year long special events: cultural and development cooperation programs, among them the donation of a desalination and water purification unit by Pass It Forward Foundation to the Philippine Red Cross,” he added.
Starting in September, the total number of Filipino students participating in the 11-month AgroStudies on-the-job-training program in Israel will be increased to 600.
Every year agriculture students from 29 state universities and colleges learn about Israel’s advanced agricultural methods.
In partnership with the Quezon City government, the President Elpidio Quirino Foundation and the President Manuel Roxas Foundation, the Philippine-Israel Friendship Park will be unveiled inside the Quezon Memorial Park.
The Friendship Park honors two main pillars of Philippine-Israel relations: then-President Quezon’s Open Door Policy in 1937 that saved the lives of 1,300 Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, as well as the Philippines’s vote for the UN resolution that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1947, when the country was under the leadership of then-President Roxas and then-Vice President and Foreign Secretary Quirino.