Now, over the weekend, thousands of volunteers now joined by soldiers have been trying to clear a so much of the beaches they can.

You can see the kind of painstaking work this is.

A lot of the tar is embedded below the sad.

This is incredibly sticky stuff, so you can see the real problem with that.

They've had to ask people to register before they just sharpen the beach because of the potential toxic nature.

How did it all happen?

Well, that remains something of a mystery.

The Israeli government is using marine tracking data, also satellite information from a European agency.

They think the most likely scenario is a ship out at sea around 30 miles out at sea, probably around a week ago or a bit mawr on that there was an undeclared oil spill, and they're using all that information to try and close in the moment on around nine different vessels that they think could be the culprit.

But so far no definitive answer on that.

They think the slick itself is under control.

They've been using planes to try and monitor it, and that is largely dissipated.

So now it is just this clear up work.

One local environmental official here described it as a catastrophe and said it could take many months or even years to fully clear it up.