There is another alternative: going around the southern tip of Africa. While this adds a couple weeks to trip time it also saves the massive Suez Canal transit tolls.

And remember the Suez Canal was closed for 8 years after the 1967 Israel/Egypt war. https://thegamming.org/2014/08/31/how-the-closure-of-the-sue...

Yeah and I'm under the impression that the fees are balanced so that it costs roughly the same amount to take either route. Ships only choose Suez because it's faster.

The Suez is at basically the one point it makes sense to build it. The next closest is off the Gulf of Aqaba and that's right on the border of Egypt and Israel. It really doesn't make sense for Egypt to go through the trouble of cutting a second one on the one in a million shot a ship gets stuck like this. The usual answer is just make sure they don't get stuck rather than spend the billions of dollars cutting a second canal would cost. Even if Egypt was somehow charged the losses for this screw up that probably wouldn't be enough to make it worth cutting a second backup canal.

There are actually 3 separate single-points-of-failure when you ship around the world.

Suez Canal

Panama Canal

Straight of Gibraltar- I think

When it was built, the notion that the land around it wouldn't be a colonial possession seemed unlikely.