Now Is Not the Time to Withdraw Peacekeepers from the Sinai

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 The jihadists’ increased sophistication, coupled with the Egyptian military’s outdated strategy, significantly endangers a peacekeeping operation that was previously considered very low-risk.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.

Read more at Washington Institute

More about: Egypt, Iran nuclear program, Israel & Zionism, Israeli Security, Jihad, Sinai Peninsula, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF