Lake Kinneret beachline opens up as illegal fences come tumbling down

The low fence placed along the Kinneret beach came down without a fight when the tractor touched it. More than a 100 like it have gone up over the years around the lake, some put up by local councils seeking to charge for entrance to beaches, others by private bodies. Yesterday, after years of legal tussles, the Interior Ministry began to destroy the illegal fences. Ministry supervisors took down 11 of them in what has been termed the biggest operation so far to open the beaches to the public.

The low fence that went down yesterday was put up more than a decade ago by the workers of the Agriculture Ministry's fishing research institute, east of Kibbutz Ginossar. Over the years the workers enjoyed their charmed little spot of beach, and the illegal fence became part of the scenery. As the fence came down, the coordinator of beach protection in the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), Nir Papai, called it a "Hanukkah miracle."

The struggle to free the beaches began in 2005 following reports by the State Comptroller's Office and the SPNI that 121 fences around the Kinneret were blocking access to the lake. The state comptroller noted that people could not approach the Kinneret beaches without paying, even if payment was ostensibly for parking only, since no access was left for pedestrians. Following the report, SPNI activists broke through a number of segments of a trail around the lake, along 35 of a total of 56 kilometers that can already be walked.

About a month and a half ago, the Beit She'an Magistrate's Court ordered a number of fences and illegal abandoned buildings along the lake shore demolished, following eight suits brought by the District Planning and Building Committee in the north against illegal construction on the baches in the area of its jurisdiction in the Jordan Valley Regional Council.

Yesterday's operation opened up additional beaches, such as the Amiad Beach, which in the past had been blocked off by a fence put up by Kibbutz Amiad.

Not far from there, east of Kibbutz Ginossar on a beach where the fences had been brought down earlier, a beautiful hiking trail wends its way through the thick natural vegetation. Unfortunately, hikers along the trail had already left candy wrappers and other kinds of garbage behind. Arnon Hefetz, head of the local committee of the village of Kinneret, in whose jurisdiction another fence came down yesterday, said sadly, "The victim of the removal of the fences is the Kinneret." Hefetz, like many area residents and those operating beach concessions, argues that beaches opened to the public become dirty and neglected.

Papai disagrees: "The fear that public access is problematic is actually an excuse to close the beaches," he says. "Removing the fences is the first step in the state's taking responsibility. Beyond the fact that many more fences have to be removed, the state has to allocate resources for cleaning the beaches, education and supervisors. There must not be a vacuum."

The SPNI said 10,000 people enjoyed the newly opened segments of beach during the interim days of the Sukkot holiday.

The supervisor of construction for the Interior Ministry in the northern district, David Ohion, said yesterday he was pleased the ministry had done its part against interested parties taking over the Kinneret beaches. Ohion slammed local authorities that "saw the fences going up and took no action to halt the phenomenon." He added "the local authorities responded with long delays to the builders of the fences, until a sad picture was created here where the state was not protecting its lands. We have now created a deterrent, and new fences will no longer be built."