Is the Israeli Negev a viable alternative to the Suez Canal?

The cargo movement over the continental bridge annually since 1970 is shown in Table 2. These figures should be compared with the (dry) volume of trade via Eilat annually (see third column of the same table) and they include the traffic via the continental bridge. From this table it is clear that the amount of cargo in transit over the bridge was not a major component of the total traffic through Eilat.