The continental margin of Israel has the shape of a lens with foreset structure. The lens was formed by accumulation since Pliocene time of mainly fine clastics derived from the Nile and transported by the counterclockwise currents of the southeastern Mediterranean. After first deposition the detritus was redistributed over the continental slope by slumping and gliding. The slumping occurred, and still takes place, in the form of block and slab sliding, rotational slumping, mudflows, debris flows, and mass creep. These processes are earthquake triggered. They result in a scarred and undulating topography of the continental slope.

Gigantic deep-seated, compound, rotational slumps have been observed in seismic profiles where a thick Pliocene-Quaternary sediment sequence overlies thick Messinian evaporites. The slumping modifies the original foreset structure of the young sediments along a sizable part of the continental margin of Israel. Excessive pore pressures generated by the Pliocene-Quaternary load in fine clastic layers interbedded within the impervious evaporites probably caused instability and consequent evaporite flow and rotational slumping of the cover sediments.