How the Americans wanted to build an alternative to the Suez Canal, through Israel, with nuclear bombs

 A declassified document reveals a 1963 US plan to create an alternative to the Suez Canal. The plan involved excavating a 250-kilometer-long corridor through the Negev desert, southern Israel with nuclear bombs, Business Insider reports.

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A unique plan was brought to light in the context of the crisis in the Suez Canal, blocked for 6 days by the Ever Given Ship. It was put back on the waterline on Monday. The crisis, however, did not pass. It is not yet known when the ship will be set in motion so that the canal is open to traffic.

The United States has considered a plan to use nearly 520 nuclear bombs to dig an alternative to the Suez Canal through Israel in the 1960s, according to a declassified memorandum, Business Insider reports. The plan was never carried out, but having a sea route as an alternative to the Suez Canal could have been useful today, after blocking one of the most important shipping routes in the world.

According to the 1963 memorandum, which was declassified in 1996, the project relied on 520 nuclear bombs to dig a navigable canal. He called for "the use of nuclear explosives to dig a canal through the Negev desert." A proposed route was through the Negev desert to connect the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, allowing access to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.