“In Israel, we have blindness in the maritime domain,” said Shaul Chorev, a retired Rear Admiral of the Israeli Navy who is now head of the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center at the University of Haifa. “Our activities are always focused on thwarting terrorist activities, but that is not the whole picture of security at sea.”
Admiral Chorev said that preventing future oil spills from reaching the coast would not only require Israel to invest in satellites and other tracking devices, but would also designate a government agency with a clear responsibility to monitor its coast for ecological disasters, as well as to contain them.
Environmental activists have warned that, although the damage caused by the spill was significant, a spill from one of the natural gas platforms off the coast of Israel could be even more destructive. Israel invested heavily to develop natural gas fields off its coast and began exporting gas to Egypt in late 2019.
“This should be a warning,” said Maya Jacobs, director of Zalul, an organization that advocates for the preservation of bodies of water in and around Israel, which relies heavily on desalinated water. “We must intensify the supervision of the platforms immediately and make the transition to the use of renewable energy.”
In Lebanon, the prime minister’s office said the tar reached the country’s southern coast. He also claimed that the oil spill originated from an Israeli ship, but did not provide evidence to support the claim.
Yasser al-Shanti, head of the Water Authority in Gaza, said that no oil had reached the beaches of Gaza, but that the authorities are tracking the situation.
Moshiko Saadi, an environmental activist who spent Tuesday helping to clean up a beach in northern Israel, said he was “heartbroken” at the ubiquity of tar.
“So many people are cleaning and filling bag after bag quickly,” said Saadi. “But then you look up and see that there are still large quantities everywhere. It makes you feel helpless. “