THE whole world seems to have exploded with people in support and solidarity with Palestinians or Israelis.
Malaysians are no exception. While the pitiable plight of innocent civilian Palestinians caught in the crossfire draws out both outrage and the innate sympathy of ordinary Malaysians far removed from the carnage and destruction, we must not lose sight of a continuing tragedy unfolding before our eyes in our own neighbourhood.
Residents of the "Islamic city" of Marawi in the southern Philippines are still reeling from the death and destruction that rained upon them when Philippine troops attacked the city to flush out an extremist posse in 2017.
As the Philippine Daily Inquirer noted about a week earlier: "Five months was all it took, from May 23, 2017 to Oct 17, 2017, for the flourishing capital of Lanao del Sur to fall into ruin following the assault by marauding Maute and Abu Sayyaf rebels in the worst security crisis to strike our shores in years.
"By the time Marawi was liberated by government forces, 1,000 people had been killed, over 350,000 displaced, and the Islamic city known as the summer capital of the South had turned into a wasteland."
Liberating an entire city besieged by terrorising rebels could never be a clean and clinical operation.
The destruction of Marawi bears clear, if tragic, testimony to this.
Few, if anyone, faulted the government of the Catholic-majority Philippines for taking such lethal force and unleashing seemingly wanton destruction to bring the rebels to heel.
What is indefensible and even unconscionable is the fact that Marawi's rehabilitation has moved at such a glacial pace after a half dozen years, leaving many of those hundreds of thousands of internally displaced residents with no rebuilt homes to return to.
The woeful attempts by the previous Philippine government under president Rodrigo Duterte, also the first president from the south, to rebuild expeditiously what his military destroyed are most regrettable.
Granted, the Philippines, even at the best of times, is not noted to accomplish anything fast given its notoriously sclerotic bureaucracy. But Duterte won an election on the back of his well-deserved reputation as a no-nonsense, law-and-order mayor of Davao City.
Surely, he must have known that leaving an entire city in the very heart of a politically fraught and volatile region to fester in utter misery for years is an open invitation for vanquished rebels to make a comeback.
It is incumbent on Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Junior to make the speedy rehabilitation of Marawi an urgent national priority in view of the potent symbolism of its once proud Islamic city still in ruin.
The powerful lesson of prolonged Palestinian dispossession breeding unending discontent and radicalism must be taken to heart by the Philippines.
Peace has been finally restored in the southern Philippines after all the bloodshed of recent decades of intermittent violence and laborious and tedious negotiations leading to the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
But it is still indisputably a rather fragile peace. Malaysia, under whose auspices BARMM came into fruition, must stay engaged to cajole and still extend an active helping hand in the equally arduous task of sustaining peace.
The lingering open sore that is Marawi must be quickly healed, and investments and economic opportunities opened up so that those Filipinos in BARMM can live in hope that with peace comes prosperity.
Malaysia and Malaysians must remain interested and involved because a return to violence and instability near our Sabah shores has grave implications for our own security too.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching