Since 1981, the Multinational Force of Observers (MFO), which includes U.S. troops, has been deployed in the Sinai peninsula to enforce the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Following the eruption of jihadist violence in the Sinai earlier this year, the Pentagon has been reassessing the need for these troops. Eric Trager argues that even a partial withdrawal would be a grave mistake:

[T]he Obama administration’s deliberations are driven by . . . quite valid concerns about ensuring the security of MFO personnel. The jihadists’ increased sophistication, coupled with the Egyptian military’s outdated strategy, significantly endangers a peacekeeping operation that was previously considered very low-risk. Despite these concerns, however, the administration should keep in mind the dangers of changing the MFO’s deployment anytime soon.

First, any decrease in the MFO’s strength risks weakening a multinational institution that has not only verified the [Egypt-Israel] treaty’s enforcement, but also encouraged the unprecedented Egyptian-Israeli strategic coordination that exists today. This coordination is not inevitable: bilateral relations nearly collapsed in September 2011, when an Egyptian mob attacked the Israeli embassy in Giza three weeks after Israeli forces accidentally killed six Egyptian soldiers while chasing jihadists back across the border. . . . Throughout this uncertain period, the MFO facilitated bilateral cooperation and, in the face of a burgeoning Sinai insurgency, even secured Israel’s permission for Egyptian troop deployments that exceeded the treaty’s limitations. If anything, today’s robust strategic coordination is an argument for the MFO’s importance, not its superfluity.

Second, given that the MFO is among the few U.S. policy successes in the Middle East, any plans to draw it down would further trouble those allies who are concerned about America’s perceived departure from the region, and undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to reassure these allies following the Iran deal.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.