“In Israel, we have marine domain blindness,” said Shaul Chorev, a retired rear admiral in the Israeli navy, who is now head of the University of Haifa’s Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center. “Our activities have always been focused on the destruction of terrorist activities, but that is not the whole picture of safety at sea.”
Admiral Chorev said that the prevention of future oil spills at the coastline is not only required of Israel to invest in satellites and other tracking devices, but also that a government body should be given the clear responsibility to monitor its coast for ecological disasters and to to contain it.
Environmental activists have warned that the damage caused by the spill could be significant, but a leak through one of the natural gas wells on the Israeli coast could be even more devastating. Israel has invested heavily in developing natural gas fields along its coast and began exporting gas to Egypt in late 2019.
“This should be a wake-up call,” said Maya Jacobs, director of Zalul, an organization that works to preserve water bodies in and around Israel, which relies heavily on desalinated water. “We need to step up surveillance of the rig immediately and move to the use of renewable energy.”
In Lebanon, the prime minister’s office said the tar was reaching the southern shores of the country. It also claims that the oil spill came from an Israeli ship, but did not provide any evidence to substantiate the claim.
Yasser al-Shanti, the head of the Gaza Water Authority, said no oil had reached Gaza’s shores, but that officials were monitoring the situation.
Moshiko Saadi, an environmental activist who spent Tuesday cleaning a beach in northern Israel, said he was “saddened” by the ubiquitous tarmac.
“So many people clean bag and bag quickly and fill up quickly,” he said. Saadi said. ‘But then you look up and see that there are still large sums everywhere. It makes you feel helpless. ”