Published: 23 September 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
National security meeting called after new estimates suggest sea levels will rise at four times the rate previously predicted, destroying beaches and essential coastal buildings.
Over the past two months, the Ministry of Defence and the Israel Defence Forces have become concerned about security installations along Israel’s coastline. “Are they going to disappear underwater?” asked security officials in several closed meetings held over the past few weeks. “How much of the shore are we going to lose, and when?” they wondered.
The planning administration has also come to understand recently that it is a problem to continue building along the coast as if water levels are not rising year after year.
Everyone has reason for concern: The sea level along Israel’s coast is rising due to the climate crisis caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
A Haaretz investigation based on conversations with more than 20 sources in government offices, local authorities, and scientists, as well as information received from many government bodies and authorities, reveals new information, according to which the changes Israel needs to prepare for are likely to be far more serious than the relevant authorities had understood until now.
In the next few days, the chief scientist at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Professor Noga Kronfeld Schor, will warn the government that Israel needs to prepare for an increase of one metre in the sea level by 2050 and up to two-and-a-half metres by 2100. Until now, various state authorities had estimated, based on international forecasts, that sea levels would rise by some 25cm by the middle of the century and by 70cm by the end of the century. In other words, up-to-date professional forecasts point to an urgent need to intensify preparations for the impact of the climate crisis.
Following the Haaretz investigation, the National Security Council announced that it would "coordinate preparatory measures" and order the writing of attribution scenarios in preparation of the issue. Ministers, mayors and MKs also promised to take action.
The latest forecasts by the Ministry of Environmental Protection take into account the rapid melting of icebergs in Antarctica and Greenland and point to dramatic conclusions – within three decades significant sections of Israel’s beaches will disappear due to rising sea levels. Multiple sources said even a half-metre rise in sea levels would lead to many beaches in Israel disappearing.
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Facing Rapid Rise in Sea Levels, Israel Could Lose Large Parts of Its Coastline by 2050 (Haaretz)
Israel Is in Danger of Drowning (Haaretz)
Photo: Israel’s coastline (Wikimedia)
