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Israeli soldiers clean tar off the Palmachim beach following an offshore oil spill which hit most of the Israeli coastline. February 22, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The Environmental Protection Ministry on Thursday pushed back against accusations of a tardy response to the oil spill disaster that has seen almost all of Israel’s Mediterranean beaches closed down because of tar pollution.
Reports of the pollution emerged last Thursday when a dead 17-meter baby fin whale washed up on Israel’s southern coast, along with other wildlife.
Asked why it took so long for Israeli authorities to get a grip on what had happened, the Environmental Protection Ministry’s director of the National Unit for the Protection of the Marine Environment, Rani Amir, said, “We had no early warning and no one in the Mediterranean knew about it.”
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel s environment reporter.
The Minerva Helen crude oil tanker, seen at the oil terminal of Dunkirk, France. (Remi Jouan, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
A crude oil tanker sailing under a Greek flag and currently anchored off Cartagena in Spain has been named by an Israeli news outlet as a suspect in the oil spill disaster that has seen almost all of Israel’s Mediterranean beaches closed down because of tar pollution.
The Kan public broadcaster reported Monday that the Greek-owned Minerva Helen, which started its working life in 2004, is suspected in this month’s incident and was previously involved in a major oil spill just off Copenhagen, Denmark, in January 2008.