Caught in the Crossfire
How Filipinos and OFWs Are Living Through the Iran War — From Haifa to Dubai, Our Kababayan Are on the Front Lines of a War That Was Never Theirs
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| Khor Fakkan Beach with the lights of Khor Fakkan Port in the background. Sharjah, UAE. September 2021. Photo: J.F.R. Perseveranda |
When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran on the night of February 28, 2026, the world watched the fireworks on their phones. But for more than 2.4 million Filipinos living and working across the Middle East, those weren't just news alerts. They were the sound of sirens. The vibration of the floor. A frantic WhatsApp message to a sister in Bulacan. A caregiver helping an elderly Israeli woman toward a bomb shelter — and not making it in time.
This is not a distant war. For the Filipino diaspora, the Middle East has never been distant. It is where we go to provide. Where we send money home from. Where our mothers and fathers, titas and kuyas, have built their second lives for decades. And right now, it is a war zone.
Where Are the 2.4 Million?
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs estimates that 2.4 million Filipinos currently live and work across the Middle East — the largest single regional concentration of the Filipino diaspora anywhere on earth. The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) counts 1.113 million of those as active land-based OFWs as of December 2025. They are the backbone of households back home, and the backbone of economies they've adopted as their own.
Filipinos in the Middle East — DFA Data, 2025–2026
The UAE alone — home to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah — holds the single largest Filipino community in the region, nearly a million strong. Saudi Arabia follows with over 800,000. Rounding out the top five are Qatar and Kuwait, both well over 100,000. These are not just workers. Many are long-term residents, business owners, students, and permanent fixtures in their adopted communities. They have built lives there — raising children, building kasamahans, planting roots even in sand.
Israel: Our Caregivers on the Front Line
There are approximately 31,000 Filipinos in Israel — and 75% of them are caregivers. That's not a coincidence. Since 1995, when the Israeli Ministry of Health began actively recruiting Filipino workers for its aging population, the caregiver-to-immigrant pipeline between the Philippines and Israel has been one of the most structured labor corridors in the diaspora. A 2018 bilateral agreement between Manila and Jerusalem formalized it further. Today, more than a third of all migrant caregivers in Israel are Filipino — caring for the elderly, the infirm, and the homebound in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.
Haifa — Israel's third-largest city and an industrial port on the northern Mediterranean coast — has a significant Filipino community embedded in its caregiver and domestic worker networks. The city made international news for the wrong reason in the opening days of the current conflict: an Iranian ballistic missile struck an oil refinery in Haifa, and the shockwave reached residential neighborhoods where Filipino workers live alongside their Israeli employers.
The Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv activated its crisis response team immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities, establishing 24/7 hotlines and coordinating with Israeli authorities to ensure that Filipinos had access to the same bomb shelters and early warning systems as Israeli citizens. Israel's Ambassador to the Philippines publicly assured that Filipino residents were "receiving the same level of protection as Israeli citizens."
But for our caregivers — whose work is, by its very nature, deeply personal — even protection has its limits. You cannot leave an 80-year-old woman in her apartment and run for the shelter alone.
Despite the dangers, the vast majority of Filipino caregivers in Israel have chosen to stay. Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Cacdac put it plainly: "By the very nature of their work, they're caregivers… they take care of their elderly patients. Some find it difficult to go home with their dedication to their work." As of the most recent DMW count, fewer than 0.02% of OFWs across the region had formally requested repatriation. For many, the fear of losing their job — their livelihood, their family's lifeline — outweighs the fear of missiles.
Dubai and the UAE: Nearly a Million Strong — Under Fire
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| Khorfakan City Municipality billboard as we drove past at 7:55 PM. Sharjah, UAE. Photo: J.F.R. Perseveranda |
The UAE is home to the largest single concentration of Filipinos in the entire Middle East — nearly 975,000 people, spread across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and the other emirates. They are nurses, engineers, hotel workers, teachers, retail staff, construction laborers, accountants, and domestic helpers. Dubai, especially, has absorbed wave after wave of Filipino migration since the oil boom years. For many families, "Dubai" is shorthand for abroad — it's where you go when you're ready to sacrifice proximity for possibility.
When Iran began its retaliatory strikes against the UAE on February 28, 2026, the images from Dubai were surreal. Smoke rising from Palm Jumeirah — the man-made island of luxury hotels. The Burj Al Arab on fire from falling missile debris. Dubai International Airport Terminal 3 struck and briefly evacuated. The city that never sleeps was suddenly silent, its famous skyline haloed in haze.
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| Standing by Khor Fakkan Beach with the Khor Fakkan Waterfall in the background. Sharjah, UAE. Photo: J.F.R. Perseveranda |
Filipinos were among those injured in the UAE attacks. No Filipino deaths in the UAE have been confirmed to date, and the Philippine Consulate General in Dubai remained open throughout the conflict, pledging to accommodate rescheduled appointments through April 2026. Philippine Ambassador Alfonso Ver addressed the Filipino community directly at Sunday Mass at St. Joseph Cathedral and St. Therese Church in Abu Dhabi on March 1 — a grounding, pastoral moment in the middle of wartime chaos.
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| Walking around Khor Fakkan Amphitheatre at 8:30 PM. This is the UAE that Filipinos built their lives in. Sharjah, UAE. Photo: J.F.R. Perseveranda |
For the Reyes-Altamirano relatives in Dubai — for every Filipino in that city right now — the daily reality has shifted. The metro runs half-empty. Streets are quiet. Many are working from home. The Consulate's guidance: "Stay calm. Shelter in place. Follow only official UAE government sources." And most of them are doing exactly that — because going home isn't always an option when your job, your contract, your family's monthly support all depends on staying.
The Stakes: Remittances, Families, and the Philippine Economy
The human cost is the first thing we feel. But the structural stakes run deep. OFW remittances from the Middle East totaled $6.48 billion in 2025 alone — roughly ₱380 billion flowing into Filipino households, buying food, paying school tuition, servicing mortgages, funding small businesses. Overall OFW remittances represented 7.3% of Philippine GDP in 2025, a 25-year low — and that figure has not yet absorbed the full impact of the current conflict.
What's at Stake Economically
Economists at the University of the Philippines have called this conflict "a direct economic fault line" for the Philippines. Iran's Revolutionary Guards have threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a fifth of global oil transits. The Philippines imports over 90% of its crude oil. When global oil prices spike, Filipino families absorb the shock at the pump, at the palengke, and in the power bill. The war overseas doesn't stay overseas.
What the Philippine Government Is Doing
The government's response has been swift in some areas and constrained in others. President Marcos Jr. activated contingency measures across all Philippine embassies in the region immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities. The DMW and OWWA established a 24/7 operations center and a repatriation assistance pipeline. Over 1,000 Filipinos stranded at airports in four countries — many returning from the Middle East as flights were cancelled due to regional airspace closures — were assisted at NAIA Terminals 1 and 3, Clark International Airport, Hong Kong, and Singapore's Changi.
The harder truth is that repatriation is logistically constrained by the very conflict it's responding to. Airspace closures across the region mean flights are scarce and unpredictable. The remains of Mary Ann de Vera could not be repatriated immediately because airports in Israel and neighboring countries were not operating. Her husband — also an OFW in Israel — and a cousin in Qatar were waiting alongside her.
📞 Emergency Contacts for OFWs in the Middle East
OWWA 24/7 Hotline: +63 (2) 8834-1916DMW Hotline: +63 (2) 8722-1144
Philippine Embassy Israel (WhatsApp): +972 54 466 1188
Philippine Embassy UAE (Abu Dhabi): +971 2 434 4229
PH Consulate General Dubai: +971 4 220 7100
eGovPH App: File repatriation requests directly via the app.
OFWs are advised to communicate via WhatsApp, the most widely used platform in the region.
What This Means for the Diaspora
There is a particular kind of fear that doesn't make the news cycle. It's the fear of a son in Bulacan refreshing his phone at 3 AM because his Nanay in Haifa hasn't answered in six hours. It's the fear of a lola in Vallejo who learned from Facebook — not from her daughter — that a missile hit near the neighborhood in Dubai where her apo works. It's the fear that lives inside the diaspora experience: that you sent your people out into the world because the world here could not hold them, and now the world out there is on fire.
The Philippines is structurally dependent on the Middle East in ways that decades of economic policy have failed to unwind. Until that changes, our people will keep going — and when the missiles come, they will shelter in place, check on their wards, and message home to say okay pa. Because that is what Filipinos do. That is what it means to be built this way.
But we should not mistake resilience for an acceptable status quo. Our caregivers in Israel deserve more than a bomb shelter and a repatriation package. Our workers in Dubai deserve more than a consulate advisory on their phone screens while Iranian drones circle overhead. They deserve a home economy strong enough that the choice between staying and leaving doesn't always land on the side of staying, no matter what.
To the Baliwag cousin in Haifa — mag-ingat ka. Stay low, stay safe, and know that your family here is watching and praying. To the Reyes-Altamirano relatives in Dubai — ingat kayo. The community is with you. And to every OFW in the Middle East right now, keeping their heads down and their hearts pointed home: you are not forgotten. PinoyBuilt was made for stories like yours.
1 Comments
Praying for all OFWs in the Middle East, esp. Dubai.
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