Volunteers tackle Israel’s tar-coated beaches
A small Israeli task force scoured the sands of a nature reserve along the Mediterranean coast on Monday as part of an effort to clean up an oil spill that has blackened most of the country’s shoreline and reached the beaches of neighbouring Lebanon.
About a dozen workers on Palmachim Beach filled green bags with the tar-coated shells and detritus that had piled up on the sand.
Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry and campaign groups estimated that 1,000 tonnes of tar washed up on the coast.
The ministry is investigating the cause of the oil spill, believed to have taken place between February 6 and 10. On Monday, it released a court-issued suppression order on all details of the investigation into the party responsible.
The Nature and Parks Authority has called it one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.
Project 500 is funded by the Defence Ministry and it put 500 people left jobless by the coronavirus recession to work for the past few months cleaning national parks and nature reserves.
When the oil spill hit early this month, the unit – comprising Jews and Arabs – was mobilised to help with the spill.
Imad Khoury, a Palestinian from Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, said the shared effort was a welcome change from the steady stream of bad news on television and internet.
“This is something different,” he said.
The environmental damage is not restricted to Israel. Farther north, deposits of tar have started washing up in southern Lebanon.
Hassan Hamza, an engineer at Tyre nature reserve, said teams were evaluating how much tar washed up to organise quick clean-ups. He said it appeared that “most Lebanese beaches have been affected by this pollution”.