Israel mourns the dying Dead Sea

There can be few sights sadder than a seaside restaurant that has been abandoned by the sea.

Dropping south on Route 90, the Israeli highway that stretches the length of the Jordan River, we turned left at the service station selling Dead Sea mud for skin-toning and salt crystals for your bath.

A few hundred metres on is a wrecked concrete building baking in the sun, one of those melancholy Middle East ruins that look as if they became redundant almost as soon as they were built.

Except this one is different. Walk into what is left of the lobby and you notice the remains of a once stylish bar.

Look ahead and you see two crescent arms enclosing a dining terrace, adorned with an outsized crusader map of the River Jordan. It is of course recognisable, despite the large hole in the concrete just up from Jericho.

The restaurant was sited so that guests could drop off the terrace straight into the sea. You do not really swim in the Dead Sea, you bounce about, and it is easy to imagine flopping into the salty waters after a hearty lunch.

Except that the sea has now gone, you can see it glittering in the sunshine just less than a mile away.

Where the sound of lapping water once mixed with chinking glasses and the clatter of plates, there is now just desert dust.

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