The expert confirmed that the physical mechanism of the incident in Karmei Yosef is undermining piping, which is a process in which the flow of water creates an underground cavity, and when the cavity grows, the ground above it collapses.
This is the place to note, on a side note, that Attorney Ayalon's claim in his summaries that a media expert, Dr. Yarkoni, confirmed in his interrogation that a sinkhole is a type of sinkhole, and that quoting from his interrogation without any context that he said: "What was described here is a phenomenon of a sinkhole, it's okay" is inaccurate. The expert referred to the article that was presented to him (even though the article was forbidden to be presented because it was not previously attached to Ayalon's opinion), and diagnosed the case described in the article from the case before us. The expert clarified that in the case mentioned in the article it was a type of limestone, unlike in the case before us. Similarly, contrary to the statement of Attorney Ayalon, the expert clarified that in the unfortunate case we are dealing with, it is not a sinkhole, nor according to the British geological definition, since it is not a matter of "natural subsidence of the soil", in addition to the expert clarified that it is not a matter of natural subsidence of the ground "due to the collapse of underground cavities", since the cavity in the case before us was created earlier (an existing cave). The water from the pool did not create the cave. The expert emphasized that there is a need for a causal connection between the leak and the formation of the cavity, while emphasizing the word "heel".
On the other hand, Prof. Sam Friedman, the expert on behalf of Ayalon, agrees with Dr. Yarkoni and Media Maiven that "natural sinkholes" are sinkholes in the Dead Sea (p. 81 of the minutes of November 30,2025), although according to him, the pits that opened up on the roads in Tel Aviv are sinkholes, as are the sinkholes in the case before us.
Regarding the original and classic geological definition of the term sinkhole, the expert clarified that since in his opinion there is no definition according to the Geological Survey of the Land of Israel, Howe refers to the definition in the United States according to the term "sinkhole". The expert confirmed that "originally a sinkhole was the collapse of soil as a result of the mass of limestone rock" or salt, but the expert clarified that according to the American geological definition of a sinkhole there are two additional definitions, one of which is also the collapse of a surface into a cavity created by a sinkhole (see transcript at p. 66). Therefore, in his opinion, the unfortunate case before us is also a sinkhole.