The oil spill that wreaked havoc on Israel's beaches is just the latest in a series of environmental disasters in recent years, and just like those disasters, this too is the result of the chaos that has ruled Israeli governments for generations.
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The lack of appropriate ecological legislation, the reliance on security arguments as an excuse for keeping information from the public, the lack of adequate budgets for environmental protection and public health – these are all the basis for the failures that leave us speechless in the face of these disasters time and time again. It's as if officials didn't know there was another way, and as if we couldn't have predicted and prepared for at least some of these difficult events.
So, for example, we took as a given the fact that the Eilat Ashkelon Company has operated for decades without having any accountability to the Israeli public until we woke up one morning seven years ago to the Evrona oil pollution disaster, one of the largest the country has ever known. We got used to the fact that thanks to security claims and a lack of legislation to deal with contaminated soil, the military industry has been polluting the country's soil and our drinking water for decades.
In exactly the same way, we continue to operate without a law that anchors the 2008 national plan for marine pollution event readiness and without legislation that regulates the use of Israeli waters where gas production takes place. This kind of legislation would have conferred the duties, powers, and budgets necessary for the timely monitoring and forecasting of disasters such as the latest oil spill, maybe even preventing it or at least limiting the damage it caused.
There has, however, been some positive change. Unlike in the West, and the US in particular, where environmental issues are the discourse of the Left, in Israel, things are different. On both the Right and the Left, there is recognition here that something needs to be done. In the US, there appears to be an unbridgeable gap between those who worry about climate change and climate change deniers. Yet in Israel, the minister of the Environmental Protection Ministry, Gila Gamliel, is a member of the Likud, a party that has publicly declared its commitment to transforming Israel's energy market to one of renewable energies and becoming carbon neutral.
Our problem is our penchant for quick fixes. We're always looking for Band-Aid solutions and taking political considerations into account. Our failure to understand that the environment is an existential matter has kept us from being a world leader in the field of environmental protection.
Decision-makers must stop feigning surprise whenever disaster strikes. They must promote legislation for the establishment of a marine authority that will provide an integrative response to the various uses of the sea. They must support the transfer of authority and budgets to coastal cities. Finally, they must urgently promote a climate law for Israel, one that will allow us to use more solar energy, and as a result, see less tar on our beaches in the future.
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