The Israel Police Maritime Unit detained a resident of the Krayot area, near Haifa on Friday after the man went kayaking near Achziv Beach and crossed the Israel-Lebanon maritime border into Lebanese territory. His transgression allegedly took place by accident, a spokesperson for the Asher Police Precinct said on Friday afternoon.
The Israel Police Maritime Police Unit was called to Achziv Beach in Nahariya, upon receiving a report of a man sailing in a kayak who crossed the border into Lebanese territory.
The Coastal District's Maritime Police team, in cooperation with navy forces, began searching for the kayakist, eventually locating an Israeli citizen in his thirties kayaking near Lebanese territory and detaining him for questioning at the Nahariya police station on suspicion of illegally crossing the border.
In a video released by the Police Spokesperson, the man can be seen turning around and heading towards the police boat.
When asked by maritime police officers what he was doing there, the man replied "I had no idea that this was the border."
"There's no real border, you can't actually see anything like that," the man explained to the officers. "Luckily, I saw a soldier from the other side. That's when I realized 'whoa, where am I?'"
The man claimed that the Lebanese force he encountered told him not to sail South (towards Israel), which is what led the man to suspect he had gone the wrong way.
In a statement, police cautioned citizens to act responsibly and avoid proximity to the naval border in the Rosh Hanikra area, which is officially defined as a closed military area.