Blobs of sticky tar began to wash on the Mediterranean shores of the country last week. Images posted on official government accounts showed seabirds and turtles covered in tar and sticky oil.
The degree of pollution is so bad, Israel’s Interior Ministry issued an advisory opinion on Sunday, urging people to stay away from the country’s beaches.
A massive clean-up is underway, but the Nature and Parks Authority said it will take a long time to make the marine area safe again. He created a registration and information center for volunteers who want to help.
“According to the field assessments, it is obvious that these complex and exhausting operations will have to continue for a long time,” said the Nature and Parks Authority.
He warned that the spill was not yet limited, as tar continued to wash on the country’s beaches.
“Out of 190 kilometers of beach in Israel, 170 kilometers were affected by the ecological disaster,” the authority said on its Facebook page on Sunday. “The event is not over yet, and the tar continues to issue on the shores.”
Authorities are investigating the source of the oil spill, suspected to be from an offshore vessel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Environment Minister Gila Gamliel visited a tar-covered part of the coast on Sunday to assess the damage.
“I was very impressed by the exemplary volunteerism of the citizens who came to clean the beaches. We must maintain our beaches, the 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 I proposed that every ship you see here be supplied with natural gas instead of polluting fuel, as happened here,” he continued. .
Gamliel said that “their moral obligation to the public is to locate those responsible for the event,” according to the statement.
“We have the opportunity to sue the ship’s insurance company, which is responsible for the pollution, and we will do everything we can to locate it,” she said.
In a separate statement posted on his Twitter account, Gamliel said: “We are making every effort to find those responsible for the disaster and tomorrow we will bring to the government’s approval a motion for resolutions for environmental rehabilitation.”