Exactly. If a second canal was made through Israel, the price to pass through would fall to just above the maintenance cost.

UAE and Israel are working together on an oil pipeline to bypass those high costs of the Suez Canal.

I recall it could reduce northbound oil tankers on the canal by something like 15%.

A canal through the narrowest part of Israel would have to be almost 3x longer than the Suez.

By the time that would be completed, Egypt could’ve (and should in my opinion) added another 1 or two lanes to the existing ones for redundancy.

They already added a second lane to the northern half of the Suez a couple years ago. Unfortunately, the ship is stuck in the southern half that has only one lane.

In addition, a quick look at a topographic map suggests that it would have to cut through terrain with an elevation of at least 500m, and that would be far from the shortest route. My guess is that only a sea-level route would be competitive, and a canal using locks would require pumped sea-water to operate them anyway.

Not to mention that a canal would threaten all the aquifers in the region, which already has a major fresh-water shortage.

Hell of a long way from Eilat to the med, and even further avoiding Gaza - about 240km.

I wonder what the political implications would be

A duopoly is not much better than a monopoly.

What makes you think it will go from maximum profit to approximately zero profit?

Competition as they fight for market share?

A duopoly today would largely fix the current situation of no transportation of cargo.

Even if it was only 50%, that’s better

That'd be quite the can of worms too? Access the the sea from South West Israel is via Gaza...

Why? There'd still be more than enough traffic to keep both full, there's no need to compete on price.