Frequent visitors to the Sea of Galilee have been dismayed to see unfamiliar mini-islands peeking out through its surface in recent weeks, and to have to walk across 40 or 50 metres more of rocks than in years past to get to the water's edge.
Boats that have been left for a few months moored to piers, where the water used to lap healthily, are now stranded on dry land. The piers themselves are crumbling, their foundations, previously shielded by the water, now exposed to the full heat of the unseasonable sunshine.
The Sea of Galilee is sinking. Fast. Some experts say it is at its lowest level since the 1930s, others that it hasn't been this low for centuries. Its plight is the clearest indication of a crisis that is affecting much of the Middle East. Long beset by water shortages, the region is currently coping with an unusually harsh drought - or failing to: its leaders seem to be doing little to offset the consequences.
Disputes over access to precious water resources have been major factors in several of the wars fought over the past 50 years between Israel and its Arab neighbours. In 1919, in a letter to Britain's prime minister, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizman, later to be Israel's first president, wrote that Palestine's "economic future" depended on the water supply "from the slopes of Mount Hermon, from the headwaters of the Jordan, and from the Litani River" in Lebanon.
It is over precisely those waters that Israel, Jordan, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria continue to argue to this day.
"Future potential conflict in our area," King Abdullah of Jordan remarked some weeks ago, "is not over land, it's over water."
The vehemence of the argument, and its potential for escalating into confrontation, is generally related to latest rainfall figures. In the last few years, those figures have been particularly grim.
In the Middle East and North Africa as a whole, according to a 1996 World Bank study, "per capita water availability has fallen from 872,000 gallons per year in 1960 to 330,000 gallons in 1996, by far the lowest in the world". So acute was the shortage last summer, that Israel - though anxious to maintain good relations with Jordan - cut back the quantity of fresh water it was supplying to the Hashemite kingdom, partially reneging on a central commitment of the 1994 peace treaty.
Meanwhile, Israel and Palestine are at intermittent loggerheads over Israeli claims that the Palestinians are illegally drilling fresh wells to access the West Bank's under-recharged underground aquifer.
The densely populated Gaza Strip has always been acknowledged as a water black spot, cited by the World Bank as "one of the most extreme examples of the water crisis . . . where each Palestinian now has access to less than 15 gallons of water per day, compared to 800 gallons of water for each American."
The greatest potential for water to spark conflict, however, is between Israel and Syria. At present, Israel has sole access to the Sea of Galilee and, so long as it retains control of the Golan Heights, access too to key sources further north.
Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, broken off in early 1996, have yet to resume, but behind-the-scenes contacts are in full swing, and water is at the heart of them. Specifically, the Syrians want Israel to withdraw from the Golan to the June 4th, 1967, lines - bringing Syrian control to the banks of the Kinneret.
This the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Ehud Barak, is disinclined to sanction. He has promised Israelis a referendum on any peace treaty with Syria; they will be far less willing to vote yes if this will spell the end of their Sea of Galilee monopoly.
With water so potent a source of conflict, one might expect every precious drop to be cherished, and every effort made to boost supplies, but all too often, the opposite applies.
Israel has for years been at the forefront of drip irrigation technology - developing state-of-the-art techniques for minimising the water needed to grow crops - and has shared that technology with the Egyptians and Jordanians. It has also been innovative in recycling water for agriculture.
Israel however has also overpumped its aquifers - raising the salinity of the water - and failed to prevent the seepage of pollutants into its fresh water sources. Similarly, in Gaza, according to the World Bank, "aquifers are mined at a rate of more than double annual rainwater recharges" and pollution often goes unchecked.
Vast quantities of water leak from delivery networks all over the region. A further exacerbation is the continued reliance on water-intensive crops, such as cotton. So acute is the shortage that Israel has recently been contemplating the notion of importing water, delivered by converted oil tanker, from Turkey. More significantly, it is also now belatedly contemplating a major investment in desalination.
Various non-profit groups have for years been offering to invest in desalination plants, to serve Israel and the Palestinians, and presented detailed plans to the Israeli government showing the relative low-cost and clear environmental benefits of such plants. Only now are they being taken seriously.
Last month, the Sea of Galilee dipped beneath 213 metres below sea level - the so-called "Red Line" at which pumping was supposed to stop to avoid irrevocable salinity. Israel's Water Commissioner, Mr Meir Ben-Meir, responded by adjusting the Red Line and approving continued pumping.
It was, he said, just an arbitrary line anyway, but a few dry weeks on, even Mr Ben-Meir is now deeply concerned. If the rains don't come soon, Sea of Galilee visitors can expect to see a lot more islands appearing, and a much longer walk to the water's edge.