Stains of sticky tar began to wash out on the shores of the Mediterranean last week. Images posted on official government accounts showed seabirds and turtles covered in tar and sticky oil.
The extent of the pollution is so bad. The Israeli Interior Ministry on Sunday issued a statement urging people to stay away from the country’s beaches.
A major cleanup is underway, but the Nature and Parks Authority said it would take a long time to make the marine area safe again. It has set up a registration and information center for volunteers who want to help.
“According to field assessments, it is clear that these complex and strenuous operations will have to continue over a long period of time,” the Nature and Parks Authority said.
It warned that the spill was not yet limited as the tar was still washing up on the country’s beaches.
“Of the 190 kilometers of beach in Israel, 170 kilometers were hit by the ecological disaster,” the authority said on its Facebook page on Sunday. “The event is not over yet, and tar is still going out on the shore.”
Authorities are investigating the source of the oil spill, presumably from a foreign ship.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Environment Minister Gila Gamliel toured part of the tar-soaked coastline on Sunday to assess the damage.
“I was very impressed by the exemplary voluntariness of the citizens who came to clean up the beaches. We need to maintain our beaches, our country and the environment,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued by the prime minister’s office.
“I just spoke to the Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources who came to us, and we suggested that every ship you see here be powered by natural gas instead of polluting fuel, as is happening here,” he said. he continued.
According to the statement, it is a moral obligation to the public to track down those responsible for the incident.
“We have the option to sue the ship’s insurance company responsible for the pollution, and we will do everything we can to detect it,” she said.
In a separate statement posted on her Twitter account, Gamliel said: “We are making every effort to find those responsible for the disaster, and tomorrow we will bring a proposal for resolutions to rehabilitate the environment.”