A war is coming – I was forewarned some weeks ago by a most unlikely expert on the subject, an old fisherman called “Charlie”. We sat at a small café by the Sea of Galilee and looked at the dry mud where the sweet waters of the lake used to rollick, at its waterline, which has now receded like Charlie’s hairline; we gazed at the old signs forbidding swimming that now stick out hundreds of yards away from the lake. Drought is always a harbinger of war, said Charlie (whose real name is Ghassan but he prefers this movie-inspired nickname).  The last drought was in the year 2000, and the Intifada broke out; he continued. The worst drought in a century has now brought the lake to its lowest level since Christ walked on it, as if the land is trying to get rid of human pestilence by starving it off, while men pour out their blood to pacify its angry spirits.

Water is a synonym for compassion in our arid land, and we are perilously short of …