The unrelenting U.S.-backed Israeli war on Lebanon killed more than 1,000 Lebanese people and displaced close to one million. The massive environmental disaster caused by Israel’s savage attacks on civilian infrastructure further compounds the U.S.-funded human catastrophe. Oil tanks and power plants were deliberately targeted.
On July 13 and 15, Israel bombed the Jiyyeh power plant south of Beirut, causing a massive oil spill that was allowed
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On Aug. 8, Wael Hmaidan, coordinator of the Lebanese NGO, the Oil Spill Working Group, stated, “This is the worst environmental problem in the history of the country, and it is unique [among] environmental problems globally, [because] after three weeks of the spill, no clean-up has started.”
According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, the oil spill in Lebanon is more dangerous—although smaller—than the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill that ravaged the coast of Alaska, one of the worst oil spills in history. The Lebanese Ministry of Environment estimates that 30,000 tons of oil have spilled thus far. According to Friends of the Earth, the oil spill “threatens to be the greatest environmental disaster ever in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
More than 80 miles of the Lebanese coastline have already been polluted. Satellite images show that the oil spill has reached as far north as Syria. Environmentalists expect the disastrous spill to affect the entire eastern Mediterranean basin, which includes Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece, as well as Lebanon.
The estimated cost of the cleanup is now $200 million and growing daily. It is expected to take years to complete.
The oil has reached the sea floor, and already has endangered sea life. In addition, the spill has destroyed commercial fishermen’s livelihoods. “It’s been almost two months since any of us worked,” Mohammed Kniwa, head of the fishermen’s union at the Raouche port in Beirut, told AFP on Aug. 27.
The oil spill on beaches throughout Lebanon will have a devastating impact on beach-based tourism, which accounts for a major part of Lebanon’s gross domestic product. Considering the great amount of damage done by the Israeli invasion, this only adds to the long-term effects on the Lebanese economy and people.
Burning oil has severely polluted the air far beyond the area of the bombed oil refinery.
The spill poses a heightened risk of cancer, according to an Italian environmental agency, which monitors the Mediterranean. Simonetta Lombardo of Info-Rac stated that the leakage “is a high-risk toxic cocktail made up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system. … It is not oil that has flowed but fuel for power stations. This contains substances such as benzene, categorized as a Class 1 carcinogen.”
