Tattered parasols, a discoloured towel and a single flip-flop are all that remains at Mineral Beach on the banks of the Dead Sea.
For decades, the sun-kissed cove each year attracted more than 500,000 holidaymakers and an income of £3million for the local community. But emerging sinkholes forced the authorities to close the beach — turning the resort into a ghost town overnight.
The area’s high salt content made the beach particularly vulnerable and huge chunks of it collapsed into deep cavities after water eroded an underlying layer of rock.
The Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth’s surface and Israel’s most visited attraction, is shrinking at a rate of around 1.1 metres per year. Sinkholes — cavities in the ground that form when water erodes the 10,000-year-old underlying salt-rock layer — have forced petrol stations to relocate and roads to be moved, while spas and resorts have closed, agricultural lands and palm orchards have disappeared, and campgrounds are pushed ever further away from the coast.
The devastation has caused what locals call a “demographic disaster” on the Israeli side of the lake once dotted with spas and resorts, farms and cafes, but now home to a fast-shrinking population.
Another aerial photo of the landscape
The Geological Survey of Israel has used satellite monitoring of the region since 2012. The “95 per cent accurate” system lets the team give an early warning of new sinkholes less than 48 hours after data gathering. But at Mineral Beach a canopy of trees had blocked the satellite’s view; overnight, the beach was forced to close down and its employees were evacuated.
At the Mitzpe Shalem Kibbutz, which owned and operated the beach and produced “Ahava” Dead Sea products, Jaki Ben-Zaken — a life-long kibbutznik — says it is more like an “old people’s home” than a once-buzzing commune. Its population has declined from a once-thriving 260 to 194 in the wake of the beach closure and the pandemic.
More than 20 families among the community depended on Mineral Beach for their livelihood, employing around 35 staff from the kibbutz. Six families have since left and, thanks to Covid, more are leaving. Ben-Zaken said: “For a small community like this, that’s like 100,000 people leaving a city, only in a city, they’d be replaced much faster.”
When the State of Israel wrote out the definitions for insurance, sinkholes were an unknown and still are not mentioned within the “natural disaster category”, so businesses are reluctant to risk the region. Ben-Zaken added: “You can’t build and you can’t bring people here.
“If there are no jobs, you can’t bring young people.”
With only 2,000 people in the area, the community lacks the votes to push the government to change the legislation regarding insurance. But Ben-Zaken is hopeful that this is by far the end of the area, which now offers kayaking tours to tourists who once thronged the beach.
Activist Oded Rahav has established a group called The Dead Sea Guardians, and has witnessed first-hand the effect on the local population as the sea loses the equivalent of 600 Olympic pools of water each day.
He said: “For the people living close to the Dead Sea, it’s causing despair.
“They live in a danger zone and they’re losing hope so they feel they either have to change the way they live or leave.”
Rahav believes the survival of the Dead Sea is critical for the Middle East’s fragile geopolitics. “It adds to the anxiety the whole region is already suffering.
Locals are finding new ways to attract tourists, such as trekking
“It’s an ecological situation which adds to the geopolitical and cultural situation. If the Jordanians don’t have access to water, they feel more anxiety, they join ISIS. It’s like a tumour which if it’s not treated, will grow to affect the whole body.”
With 7,000 sinkholes having appeared on the western coast, nothing symbolises the ongoing cataclysm more than the fate of the date orchards there. Rahav said: “These majestic trees are so strong and tall, then you see a week later they’re on the ground, the tree top is suddenly grey, it’s the best way to present pure death.”
Yet according to Dr Nadav Lensky, of the Geological Survey of Israel, there is hope for the area to rejuvenate, utilising affordable technology and early warning systems. Greening is bringing with it new flora and fauna. The landscape is unrecognisable to those who knew it even just a few years ago. Dramatic new salt reefs have appeared. Giant salt chimneys jut out from the surface.
Dr Lensky said: “Yes, we don’t have the same views as our grandparents, the area is evolving, but it offers new landscapes such as the white salty beaches, the bays and pointed peninsulas that started appearing in the past two decades, the sinkholes that have their own beauty, and many more phenomena unique to the new shores.
“There is a great potential here for trekking and walking along the coasts, for education about active geology, for scientific research, and for recreation.
“We just have to be very flexible in how we deal with this, and in terms of warning and safety, safe access to these landscapes is doable.”
Ben-Zaken believes that with monitoring in place, there is hope despite the ecological disaster.
“If you don’t bring hope and you have authorities saying don’t go there, there is no hope, but we are trying to change that. We know the dynamics of the area, so it’s not a big dark secret.”
