A project led by Israel’s National Mine Action Authority and researchers from the National Institute of Oceanography is trying to clear unexploded munitions from the Mediterranean Sea so the coastline near Rishon Lezion can be reopened to the public.
Who Controls the Shore
The effort sits squarely in the hands of state institutions. Israel’s National Mine Action Authority is leading the work with researchers from the National Institute of Oceanography, while the municipality of Rishon Lezion is funding the joint research project. The goal is not subtle: return some 2 kilometers, or 1.2 miles, of shoreline to people living in Israel’s central city of Rishon Lezion, where the sea has been treated as a firing range for decades.
That shoreline has been locked up by military use since the country’s founding nearly 80 years ago. The government says nearly half the country’s 194-kilometer, or 120-mile, coastline is off limits to civilians, used instead for commercial ports, power plants, desalination facilities, military bases and firing zones. Around Rishon Lezion, 7 kilometers, or 4.3 miles, nearly the entire length of the shoreline, has been used as a firing range, launching grenades as well as small and large mortars. Hundreds of thousands of people have been crammed into a narrow strip of beach while the state kept the rest under lock and key.
On a June dive off the coast of Rishon Lezion, divers searched for yellow-painted mock mortar shells and came back empty-handed after hours on the seabed. It was the team’s fifth diving trip in the yearslong experiment. Roy Jaijel, a researcher in the marine geology and geophysics department at Israel’s National Institute of Oceanography, said, “It’s really hard to find things in the sea.” Israel Faintuch, head of the Maritime Division at Israel’s Ministry of Defense National Mine Action Authority, said, “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.” Dafna Eliahu, a graduate student working on the project, said, “So with actual live munition I expect it to be very difficult, very hard to locate and to actually be able to find them.”
What People Get, What Power Keeps
The project uses fake munitions of various sizes, some equipped with motion sensors, placed at depths of 5, 10 and 15 meters, or 16, 33 and 59 feet, and up to 1.2 kilometers, or 0.75 miles, offshore. After several months, divers retrieve the munitions, analyze the data and plant new ones. Preliminary findings show the munitions moved less than expected, which could mean less area needs clearing, Eliahu said.
Israel’s Defense Ministry wants enough data to start clearing by the end of next year and expand the shoreline by an initial 150 meters, or 492 feet, within a few months. Completing the project will take years and cost tens of millions of dollars. The timeline has already been shoved around by war. Israel’s multiple wars with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran have delayed the work because divers can’t operate when missiles are falling and could land in the sea.
During the current war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran and the 12-day war last June between Israel and Iran, the army said missiles aimed at larger cities like Rishon Lezion fell into the sea but would not specify how many. Israel says no one has been injured or killed by unexploded sea ordnance, but there have been about a dozen sightings of devices in the last 20 years where police and the army were called. Most were found on or near shore.
The Experts, the Funding, the Sales Pitch
The project is one of the first to focus on clearing smaller munitions in complicated underwater terrain, and leaders say the findings could be useful beyond Israel. According to the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, more than half of global incidents related to unexploded ordnance, such as sightings or drifting mines, were recorded in the Middle East between 2014 and 2023, with most occurring in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, largely because of Yemen’s civil war.
Pedro Basto, research and innovation program manager with the group, said it is important to keep interest high in removing underwater explosives because of the increasing dependence on the seas. “Both renewable energies based on the sea (wind turbines and harnessing water currents) and the global connectivity that most of the world relies on every minute of every day, depend massively on underwater cable laying,” he said.
Moria Malka, head spokesperson for the city’s municipality, said the clearance will triple the area’s coastline and much of it will become a nature reserve as well as a residential area near the sea. For beachgoers like Mark Kostman, that sounds like a rare crack in the wall. “Holidays and Saturdays, all of this place is completely crowded and too dense to even have fun,” Kostman said while playing volleyball with his children next to the firing zone. “Having it as public space for leisure and sport ... it’s wonderful.”
The state and its military apparatus built the barrier, then present the cleanup as progress. For the people packed against that narrow strip of beach, the promise is simple: a little more access to land that was never supposed to be treated like a permanent weapons range in the first place.