The Golan Regional Council is closing beaches around Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, where garbage is piling up due to a bureaucratic dispute between the council and the Israel Lands Administration (ILA).

The move during Passover could disappoint the tens of thousands of vacationers who customarily throng to the lake for the weeklong holiday.

The squabble between the council and the ILA is holding up issuing the tender for operating the regional council's beaches, which include Kursi, Dugit and Duga. As a result, garbage is piling up and the best areas of the shore have been turned into toilets.

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The Golan council said that as long as the ILA doesn't allocate the beaches to them they cannot issue tenders to operate them. An official familiar with the issue said the council's abandoning the lake was intended to escalate the crisis and press the authorities to take urgent action with the help of the piling-up garbage.

Two months ago Interior Minister Roni Bar-On said he would set up a professional inter-ministerial team to examine and coordinate the opening of the Kinneret's beaches to the public. But the team has not yet held a meeting.

Former interior minister Ophir Pines-Paz also undertook more than a year ago to deal with the problem of the Kinneret's beaches and organize their operation.

Yossi Vardi, head of the Emek Hayarden regional council, said he was considering doing the same as the Golan Regional Council stopping cleaning and maintaining the beaches in his jurisdiction and even shutting them down.

Other regional council heads are demanding that operating the beaches be
regulated, including the enacting of a relevant bylaw. On Wednesday the beaches are operated on the basis of the bylaw dealing with parking vehicles.

No fewer than 19 official bodies are responsible for the Kinneret, the council heads say. Not only do they not coordinate their activities, they sometimes even act at cross purposes.