Mideast crisis--Blog from Jerusalem
JERUSALEM--Even as the current war between Israel and Lebanon deepens the divide between Jews and Arabs, Israeli environmentalists are trying to save the Lebanese beaches.
Environmentalists tend to see the world without borders, knowing that polluted air in one country is likely to affect people across the border within a matter of time. They care for the whole environment and not the part only within their borders.
For that reason, Israeli environmentalists like Gideon Bromberg are deeply concerned about the oil slick off the Lebanon coast caused when Israeli jets bombed the Jiyyeh power station some 20 miles south of Beirut on July 13 and 15.
"There is a level of environmental solidarity for Lebanon also among environmentalists from Israel," Bromberg, the Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a regional environmental organization, told U.S. News. "This is the largest oil spill ever in the eastern Mediterranean, and the implications are tremendous. We must act today in order to prevent long-term damage to the Mediterranean that will be felt for decades to come."
Bromberg has called on the Israeli defense and foreign ministries to guarantee the safety of volunteers who plan to clean the slick this weekend. FoEME has also called for an investigation into the bombing of the power plant.
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Environment, the bombing caused some 30,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to spill into the sea and spread along the country's sandy beaches.
The oil is highly toxic and carcinogenic. It affects the hormone systems of all living beings and kills all marine life. Dead fish have already washed up along Lebanon's shores. Some fear the oil will kill off the endangered green turtles that bury their eggs on northern Lebanese beaches. The eggs start to hatch now and need to reach deep waters as fast as possible but have little hope of crossing the oil slick on the beach. Lebanese NGOs say that coastal fishery will be doomed for years to come, destroying the livelihood of fishermen. The blackened beaches will likely severely hurt the country's emerging tourism industry.
The roughly 60-mile-long oil slick now stretches to the Syrian port city of Tartus and threatens to reach Turkey, which is on high alert to stop it before it damages heavily tourist-visited beaches.
Cleaning up the spill is a job too big for Lebanese environmentalists, who were at a loss dealing with a 50-ton oil spill in 2003. They called for help from outside professionals.
This weekend, Lebanese environmentalists are reportedly scheduling a major cleanup of the Lebanese coast with materials brought in from Europe, and hundreds of volunteers are planning to gather at the beaches of Lebanon to start the cleanup.
But they fear becoming casualties of the war themselves.
"The constant Israeli air raids will make the operation very difficult, and an immediate cease-fire is needed if we want to save Lebanon and its environment," said a group of Lebanese NGOs in a recent press release.
FoEME hopes it can achieve at least a cessation of airstrikes and naval shellings along the coast.
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