Hundreds of thousands of residents crammed onto a narrow strip of Mediterranean beach may soon get relief. Israeli researchers are testing new methods to locate and remove unexploded munitions from the sea near Rishon Lezion, aiming to reopen 2 kilometers of coastline that's been closed as a firing range for decades.
The effort is being led by Israel's National Mine Action Authority and researchers from the National Institute of Oceanography, with the municipality of Rishon Lezion funding the joint research project. It's a painstaking process. On a June dive off the coast, divers searched for yellow-painted mock mortar shells and surfaced empty-handed after hours on the seabed.
The Challenge of Underwater Clearance
"It's really hard to find things in the sea," said Roy Jaijel, a researcher in the marine geology and geophysics department at Israel's National Institute of Oceanography. Israel Faintuch, head of the Maritime Division at Israel's Ministry of Defense National Mine Action Authority, put it bluntly: "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack." The team's June expedition was their fifth diving trip in the yearslong experiment.
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." The area has been used as a firing range for decades, launching grenades as well as small and large mortars.
Public Access Severely Limited
The government says nearly half the country's 194-kilometer coastline is off limits to civilians, used for commercial ports, power plants, desalination facilities, military bases and firing zones. Since the country's founding nearly 80 years ago, 7 kilometers—nearly the entire length of Rishon Lezion's shoreline—has been used as a firing range, leaving hundreds of thousands of people crammed into a narrow strip of beach.
To gather data, divers place fake munitions of various sizes, some equipped with motion sensors, at depths of 5, 10 and 15 meters, and up to 1.2 kilometers offshore. After several months, they 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.
Wars Delay Progress
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 within a few months. Completing the project will take years and cost tens of millions of dollars. It has already been delayed by Israel's multiple wars with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran because divers can't work 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.
Global Implications
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 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 is welcome news. "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."
Why This Matters:
The project highlights how military activities can restrict public access to shared resources for generations, concentrating hundreds of thousands of people into overcrowded spaces while vast stretches of coastline remain off-limits. Nearly half of Israel's entire Mediterranean shoreline is unavailable to civilians, a striking example of how security infrastructure can limit everyday quality of life. The clearance effort represents an investment in public space and environmental restoration, turning firing ranges into nature reserves and residential areas. Globally, the research addresses a growing problem as conflicts leave underwater ordnance that threatens not just beachgoers but also renewable energy infrastructure and the undersea cables that power global connectivity. The concentration of unexploded ordnance incidents in the Middle East over the past decade, particularly off Yemen's coast, underscores how civilian populations and critical infrastructure bear the lasting costs of armed conflict long after fighting ends.