For the last two weeks, sticky tar has been blackening Israel’s beaches, with reports that an unidentified vessel dumped as much as 1,100 tons of crude oil off the coast. Israeli authorities have shut down beaches and temporarily banned the sale of seafood in the areas affected, while shocking images emerged of turtles covered in oil.
The spill has impacted more than 90 percent of the country’s coastline, with environmental agencies declaring an ecological disaster that will take years to remedy. Just as the Exxon Valdez scandal showcased Exxon’s lack of planning and capacity to deal with an oil spill even though it was one of the world’s largest companies, the current tragedy has laid bare Israel’s woeful inability to handle an environmental crisis even though it is usually considered among the world’s foremost nations at disaster response.
