An abandoned lifeguard cabin, a rusty pier and mangled umbrellas are all that is left of Ein Gedi, once a spot drawing international tourists to float in the world-famous waters of the Dead Sea.
Now, this lush desert oasis at the lowest point on Earth sits in ruins beside the shrinking sea, whose highly salty waters are rapidly retreating due to industrial use and climate change, which is accelerating their natural evaporation.
The beach has been closed to the public for five years, mainly due to the appearance of dangerous sinkholes, but also because the dramatic recession of the sea's level has made it tricky to reach its therapeutic waters, known for extraordinary buoyancy that lets bathers float effortlessly.
The increasingly exposed shoreline and the sinkholes, caused by a flow of freshwater dissolving layers of salt beneath the Earth's surface, are not new.
In fact, the Dead Sea, nestled where Jordanian and Palestinian territory meet, has famously been dying for years.
Now, with war raging in the Middle East, efforts to tackle this ever-worsening ecological disaster appear to have dissolved too.
"Regional cooperation is the key... to saving the Dead Sea," said Nadav Tal, a hydrologist and water officer for the Israel office of EcoPeace, a regional environmental nonprofit that has long advocated for finding a solution.
"Because we are living in a conflict area, there is an obstacle," he said, describing how the sea has been declining more than one metre (three feet) per year since the 1960s.
- 'Ecological disaster' -
The evaporation of the salty waters in a time of rapid climate change and in a place where summer temperatures can reach upward of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) has been exacerbated by decades of water diversions from the sea's main source -- the Jordan River -- as well as various tributaries that begin in Lebanon and Syria.
The water is also being pumped out by local factories extracting natural minerals -- potash, bromine, sodium chloride, magnesia, magnesium chloride and metal magnesium -- to sell to markets across the world.
"The consequences of this water diversion is what we see around us," Tal told AFP, pointing to a nearby pier that was once submerged in water but now stands firmly on dry land.
"It is an ecological disaster," he emphasized.
Although some efforts have been made to address the Dead Sea disaster, including past agreements signed by Israel and Jordan, the wars raging in Gaza and beyond have brought regional tensions to an all-time high, meaning tackling cross-border environmental issues is no longer a priority for governments in the region.
