Israel tarred its own coastline? Lebanon blames Israel for oil spill

Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced that “a ship of the Israeli enemy” was to blame for the spill.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Three weeks after a massive oil spill which Israeli environmental experts called the worst ecological disaster to befall the Jewish State in decades, Lebanon is gearing up to file a UN complaint blaming Israel for the incident.

Huge amounts of tar and dead sea animals, including turtles and a baby fin whale, washed up on Israel’s shores in mid-February.

The pollution eventually reached Lebanon’s southern beaches, and the Levantine state was quick to place the blame squarely on Israel.

According to a report from the Al Markazia news agency on Thursday, the Lebanese parliament’s Environment Committee is urging the government to file an “urgent complaint” against Israel to the UN, blaming the Jewish State for “environmental aggression.”

On Tuesday, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry sent a letter asking the UN for assistance in investigating the cause of the spill.

The letter asked for the UN to help “determine the causes of this leakage and who is responsible for it, so that Lebanon can claim compensation for the grave environmental damage it suffered.”

In late February, Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced that “a ship of the Israeli enemy” was to blame for the spill. Diab did not cite any evidence or elaborate on how Israel was responsible for the disaster, which tarred more than 100 miles of its coastline.

Israel’s Environmental Minister Gila Gamliel said on Wednesday that the spill was caused by a Libyan ship passing through the Mediterranean Sea some 20 kilometers off the Israeli coast.

Calling the spill an act of “environmental terrorism,” she suggested that based on circumstantial evidence, Iran was behind the incident.

“Iran is initiating terrorism not only with nuclear weapons and efforts to entrench itself on our borders. Iran is initiating terrorism by harming the environment,” Gamliel tweeted.

“Our fight against pollution and harming the environment is a cross-border fight.”

However, officials from the Mossad and IDF were surprised by Gamliel’s statements.

During a Channel 13 interview, a senior security official told the network that Israel’s intelligence establishment “does not share this assessment.”

Gila GamlielIranIsraeli environmentLebanonOil Spill