The organization gained international attention during the Israel-Hamas war through maritime and Israeli strikes they claimed aimed to force Israel's combat withdrawal, The Associated Press reported. Following the Oct. 10 ceasefire start, no attacks have been attributed to the group. Though rebels insisted operations focused on Israel-affiliated vessels, targeted ships demonstrated limited connection to the conflict. The campaign killed at least nine maritime personnel, sank four vessels, and disrupted Red Sea commerce previously handling approximately $1 trillion in goods annually before hostilities, The Associated Press noted. The latest strike hit Dutch-flagged cargo ship Minervagracht on Sept. 29, killing one crew member and wounding another.

Egypt's Suez Canal, linking Red Sea waters to the Mediterranean, experienced severe transit disruption from the strikes, The Associated Press reported. The waterway provides critical hard currency for Egypt, generating $10 billion in 2023 as the nation's economy struggles. The International Monetary Fund noted in July that rebel operations "reduced foreign exchange inflows from the Suez Canal by $6 billion in 2024." Despite modest recent traffic increases during the attack lull, many shippers continue routing around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid Red Sea waters and the Gulf of Aden, The Associated Press noted.

US forces launched intensive bombing operations against the rebels earlier this year that President Donald Trump halted before his Middle East visit, The Associated Press reported. The Biden administration similarly conducted strikes, including deploying America's B-2 stealth bombers targeting what officials described as underground rebel facilities.

The rebels have escalated Saudi Arabia threats and detained dozens from UN agencies and aid groups as prisoners, alleging without evidence they were spies – claims fiercely denied by the UN and others, The Associated Press reported. Israeli forces previously warned of escalated responses to any renewed maritime attacks.

Shipping industry analysts project cautious resumption of Red Sea routes contingent on sustained ceasefire stability, with insurance costs and security concerns continuing to influence routing decisions, according to maritime security sources cited by The Associated Press. The rebels' conditional suspension leaves commercial shipping vulnerable to rapid campaign resumption if Gaza hostilities restart.

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Renowned Israeli mentalist Uri Geller is taking credit for shifting the Ever Given cargo ship, which created an international crisis after getting stuck in the Suez Canal last week.

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Geller called on his supporters to help "free" the ship.

In a tweet on Monday, Geller wrote: "We did it! We released the Ship! Well done! This was a mammoth task but with your mind-power and self belief we all together freed the ship!"

Geller added that efforts by himself and his followers also helped efforts by the crews on the ground, and congratulated them, as well.

Geller also shared an article from the British Daily Star tabloid in which he said that every day since the ship had gotten stuck, blocking traffic through the small but crucial shipping route and sending global shipping costs skyrocketing, he and his followers had "concentrated" twice a day – at 11:11 a.m. and 11:11 p.m. – on freeing the ship.

The efforts helped the tugboats, too, Geller told the Daily Star.

In a video he posted to social media, Geller said that the ship could be moved by people's minds, if "we believe in ourselves."

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For hours firefighters battled to contain the towering pillars of fire, which burned dozens of cars. A video circulating on social media showed clouds of dense, black smoke billowing over the desert road that stretches from the capital, Cairo, to the city of Ismailia, on the Suez Canal.

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Egypt's Health Ministry said 17 people suffering burns and smoke inhalation were rushed to a hospital for treatment, and all hospitals near the site were preparing to receive more injured.

A torrent of crude oil leaked from the broken Shuqair-Mostorod pipeline into the thoroughfare, where a spark from the heavy traffic ignited the fire, Egypt's Petroleum Ministry said. It said authorities managed to close the main valves and extinguish the fire.

The ministry, as well as the country's public prosecutor, said they would investigate to determine the exact reasons for the rupture.

In a phone interview with Egypt's private Sada al-Balad TV, the president of the petroleum pipelines company, Emad Abdel-Qader, said initial reports indicated that an "external party" had possibly punctured the line.

Egypt is not a major oil exporter, but crude and petroleum products flow through its Suez Canal daily. Jordan and neighboring Israel have relied on Egypt's pipelines to meet their energy needs.

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Leaks in petroleum pipelines are startlingly common in Egypt, where infrastructure tends to be accident-prone and dilapidated. One-third of the population lives in poverty and people sometimes tap pipelines to pilfer fuel for resale on the black market.

In one such accident last fall, thieves were trying to siphon off gasoline in the Nile Delta province of Beheira when leaked fuel caught fire, killing seven.

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The canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, revolutionized maritime travel by creating a direct shipping route between the East and the West. But over the years, the invasive species have driven native marine life toward extinction and altered the delicate Mediterranean ecosystem with potentially devastating consequences, scientists say.

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The influx has increased significantly since Egypt doubled its capacity in 2015 with the opening of the "The New Suez Canal," raising alarm in Europe and sparking criticism from various countries along the Mediterranean basin. The sharpest criticism comes from neighboring Israel, which once battled Egypt in wars alongside the 193-kilometer (120-mile)-long canal.

Bella Galil, an Israeli marine biologist who has studied the Mediterranean for over three decades, said much of the ecological damage is irreversible.

But with the invasive fish and crustaceans buoyed by warming water temperatures and rapidly spreading toward European shores, she argued that urgent action is needed to minimize its long-term impact. Galil, of Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, said the continued widening and deepening of the canal had created a "moving aquarium" of species that, if unchecked, could make coastal waters inhospitable for humans.

Galil said the number of invasive species, currently about 400, has more than doubled over the past 30 years, a phenomenon she called a "historic example of the dangers of unintended consequences."

Already, Israel is coping with an unprecedented wave of toxic jellyfish that has damaged coastal power plants and scared off beach-goers and tourists. Several other venomous species, including the aggressive lionfish, have established permanent colonies, creating a potential health hazard when they end up on plates of beach-side restaurants. Most worrisome has been the arrival of the Lagocephalus Sceleratus, an extremely poisonous bony fish commonly known as the silver-cheeked toadfish.

Galil said half of all the Israeli fish intake – and all the crustaceans – are now of the invasive variety.

With the "rolling invasion" now reaching as far as Spain, European countries are increasingly taking note. The issue is set to feature prominently at a United Nations ocean sustainability workshop this month in Venice.

"These non-indigenous organisms present serious threats to the local biodiversity, at the very least comparable to those exerted by climate change, pollution and over-fishing," Galil said.

She said the new species have caused "a dramatic restructuring" of the ecosystem, endangering various local species and wiping out native mussels, prawns and red mullet.

Israel's Environmental Protection Ministry said it was monitoring the process with concern since its coasts were the new species' "first stop" in the Mediterranean. It stressed that Israel could not stop the phenomenon alone but is promoting regulation to protect the most vulnerable marine habitats. With Israel increasingly reliant on the Mediterranean Sea for drinking water, the ministry said protecting the country's marine environment was "now more important than ever."

Lebanese scientists at the American University of Beirut recently wrote that failing to mitigate the ecological risks associated with the expansion of the Suez Canal would place a large part of the Mediterranean ecosystem in jeopardy, an opinion shared by marine scientists across the eastern Mediterranean, from Turkey to Tunisia.

A relatively simple option for damage control seems to be available in the form of the Qatari-funded desalination plants the Egyptians are building along the canal, the first of which is expected to be opened later this year.

If carried out properly, Galil said the brine output of the plants could be funneled into the canal to recreate a "salinity barrier" that could stem the flow of species from south to north. The Great Bitter Lakes, about 45 kilometers (30 miles) north of Suez, once created such an obstacle. But as the canal widened and Egyptian cities and farms flushed agricultural wastewater into the lakes, that bulwark disappeared.

Egypt, which signed a peace accord with Israel in 1979 and recently signed a massive deal with it to import natural gas, has largely rejected the dire warnings of the Israeli scientists as politically motivated.

"Invasive species is a huge and nonspecific category," said Moustafa Fouda, an adviser to Egypt's environment minister. "They can even be productive, replacing species that are overfished, bringing economic benefits or simply adapting to the new environment."

He estimated that less than 5% of invaders could be regarded as "disruptive" and that most of the shrimp, mollusks, pufferfish and crabs caused no harm. He said even toxic invaders, such as lionfish, were edible if their venomous spines were removed.

Egyptian experts also denied the invasions resulted directly from the Suez expansion. They argue that rising water temperatures brought on by global warming and untreated ballast water discharged by cargo ships spurred the exotic arrivals.

"Invasions are a global trend due to pollution and climate change, the natural result of which is every species struggling to survive and searching for its optimal environment," said Tarek Temraz, a marine biology professor at Suez Canal University, and author of the environmental ministry's impact assessment of the canal expansion.

The Suez Canal Authority, the government agency that operates the canal, claimed environmental concerns over its enlargement have been overstated. It said water volume flowing into the Mediterranean increased by 4%, creating "little impact on water flow and plankton movement."

Canal officials say they are closely monitoring species migration, imposing regulations on ships that unwittingly ferry invasive creatures and curtailing water contamination in hopes of restoring salinity to the lakes.

The canal authority said a recent drive to divert agricultural wastewater away from the Bitter Lakes has successfully raised salinity there by 3% over the past years.

Galil says that's not enough, insisting that salinity must increase significantly to serve as an effective barrier against newcomers.

"One day we will wake up to a complete and irreversible change and know that there was something we could have done about it if only it had been done on time," she said.

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"He was an outstanding soldier, the only soldier I saw with a black kippah," says Shlomo Ardinest, the company commander who had served with Tubel.

"He was a haredi soldier who came to the IDF from yeshiva and that was special. In the months before the fighting broke out, he stood out as very strong physically, someone who would take on any challenge, pleasant, admired and disciplined. In the outposts, food was mostly combat rations and Tubel would bring different spices from home, add them and make the military rations into delicacies, and of course share with us all."

The prayer ended. Silence settled on the 450 soldiers who were manning the front line, with the aid of about 80 tanks.

"In those days, we would see the Egyptian forces practicing crossing the canal in front of us. It worried me," says Ardinest.

Ari Ginossar, who was also serving on the pier, adds, "At the time, they would send Nahal soldiers at the end of their service to Sharm e-Sheikh for two months and then for another two months on the canal outposts. That was how it was. End of the road, complacency. None of the guys had ever been in battle or under fire in his life. I was responsible for sending them home. In hindsight, it turns out that I was actually sealing people's fate, who stayed and who went. Our cook, for example, wanted to go home and I didn't let him. I said, 'The guys are fasting, who will let them eat well and kosher after the fast?' By doing so, without knowing it, I doomed him to be captured and imprisoned."

Despite the nonchalance, the soldiers were still under order to sleep with their boots on. At 1:50 p.m. on Yom Kippur, the alert turned into a war.

"We heard a siren and the radio notified us that it was not a drill," Ardinest recalls. "I went up top with a few spotters. At first, there was quiet and you didn't think anything would happen but then, all of a sudden, we were being bombarded by fighter jets and we were under heavy artillery fire."

Ginossar remembers: "The Egyptians fooled the IDF. A year earlier, they had carried out a huge drill of crossing the canal and the whole country was worried but later nothing happened, so they thought it was a trick this time, too. But unlike the previous time, the Egyptian soldiers who were part of the canal drill didn't go back to their bases in trucks – they hid on the other side. A very large contingent gathered there and no one on our side even noticed."

The heavy Egyptian assault lasted about 45 minutes, after which some 8,000 well-trained Egyptian commandos crossed the canal, armed with missiles, and dug in around the Israeli positions, setting down stocks of missiles to be used against the tanks that were en route to help.

"The moment the shooting stopped, all the soldiers in our outposts fanned out. But the southern end of the post was open. On the other sides, there were obstacles or canal water and it wasn't easy to attack. The southern end was vulnerable and Tubel was there, with commander David Turgeman, Ginossar and other soldiers. Hundreds of Egyptian commandos were shooting and firing missiles from every direction. The guys at the southern end were fighting like crazy. At the end of the war, there were over 150 bodies of Egyptian commandos counted there, as well as a lot of wounded. Senior commanders in the Egyptian army confirmed after the war that they didn't understand how we held on," Ardinest says.

Ginossar, who was fighting alongside Tubel, adds, "There was a siren, there was a bombardment and you didn't know if it was war or what would happen next. Then the Egyptian attacks started and Tubel and Turgeman were shooting like crazy. I ran with a machine gun to help push back the offensive. No one had prepared us for an eventuality like this, we didn't understand what was going on, we were all scared but we fought to the end. It's hard to explain now what we went through. We went from total complacency to a terrible war.

Moshe-Itzhak Tubel came to the Nahal company from Bnei Brak, where he was raised in a haredi Talmud Torah school. He then went on to a yeshiva in Haifa. In 1971, he enlisted in the army and served in what was the first iteration of today's haredi Nahal – a special track established in the 1960s by the Young Agudath Israel Movement. Tubel was a cantor and talented with the shofar but also enjoyed the Beatles and Arik Einstein.

Tubel's sister Tzipora gave an interview before she died in which she said, "He was the only paratrooper in our neighborhood. For us, it was a source of pride to see a soldier in Bnei Brak. I remember him coming home, putting me on his shoulders, walking around the house and singing. When I grew up, I wouldn't accept a shidduch with a boy who hadn't served in the army."

His brother, Moti, says that Tubel loved soccer. "He was an excellent player and also went to matches. He even dreamed of going to England and studying soccer professionally."

But all these dreams came to an end in one heroic moment on the pier.

"During the battle, I hear Tubel shouting, 'Grenade in the post!' An Egyptian soldier had thrown a grenade that landed among us and put everyone in danger. I saw Tubel trying to throw it back but realizing he didn't have time. Suddenly, he calmly took the grenade and laid down on top of it.

"We heard a huge explosion. I was thrown in the air and wounded by shrapnel. Tubel was critically wounded. It was clear to me at that moment that he'd given his life for us. He was still alive but we couldn't evacuate him because we were under massive fire. Only that even did we evacuate him to the medical bunker. I knew then it was too late. His body had taken most of the force of the grenade," Ginossar recalls.

Forty-six years later, Dr. Nahum Verbin – who battled to save Tubel's life and the life of another haredi soldier, Avichayil Peled, who was also seriously wounded but survived – says he is still too emotional to discuss the events and refers Israel Hayom to his blog, where he wrote this: "Tubel and Avichayail arrived wrecked. … Most of Tubel's blood had been spilled there before they brought him in. He was still conscious and said he couldn't feel his legs, with good reason – he didn't have any legs anymore, only torn pants and scraps of skin and shards of bone. … I put two tourniquets on him, set up a blood transfusion and then gave him a shot of antibiotics. I covered him with disinfectant and bandaged what had been his legs and called in an emergency evacuation."

According to Ginossar, "That night, the shooting stopped. The Egyptian commandos had been repelled and I could go down to the medical bunker. Dr. Verbin was doing wonders and miracles but when he saw me he took my face in his hands and said, 'Ari, Tubel died in my arms.' He was so pained he couldn't [save him]. The tank guys who had tried to rescue us were shattered, too. The IDF didn't know back then what Sager missiles were and the tanks that were headed for the outpost went straight into an ambush and took a serious hit. These missiles were new to them and they looked stunned."

Peled, who was serving with the IDF Rabbinate, found himself in the war almost by chance. He had arrived to organize Yom Kippur prayers.

"I was happy to find another haredi man who was handling everything necessary," he says of Tubel. "It was good I had someone to help. Then, suddenly, the Egyptians attacked and you find yourself grabbing a gun and fighting. In the middle of it, I heard Tubel jump on the grenade and be wounded but there was nothing to be done other than keep fighting," he remembers.

"The guys on the pier were fighting surrounded by dead and wounded and it was clear that there would be no rescue and they were surrounded. They demonstrated tremendous heroism," Ardinest says.

Eventually, despite their heroic stance, the IDF decided that the soldiers on the pier would surrender after two extraction attempts failed and their ammunition was running out.

"At first, we weren't willing to surrender. I wanted to fight until our last bullet. All of us, all the soldiers there, weren't willing to give up until we were beaten. Even those who had never been in battle," Ginossar said.

"It wasn't easy but in the end, we complied with the order to surrender. We left behind our dead comrades, one of whom was Tubel, in the bunker, covered up. We only took the wounded. … The Egyptians didn't return Tubel's body until 1979, after the peace treaty [between Israel and Egypt]. When I returned from Egyptian captivity 35 days later, they asked me to recommend candidates for citations. Without hesitating, I recommended Avichayail and Itzhak [Tubel], who gave his life to save his comrades, including me," he adds.

After the war, both Tubel and Peled were awarded medals by the chief of staff. Tubel's friends and family think that the fact that he knowingly gave his life to save his friends justifies the Medal of Distinguished Service.

"I was very supportive of Itzhak's sister, who worked to have him awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service. I understood that it was important to her and her children but I also told her there was no chance that anyone in the IDF would deal with the matter after so many years and it was a shame. It's important to remember a brave soldier like him, who came from the haredi sector, fought and saved us at the cost of his own life," Ginossar says.

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