Now Is Not the Time to Withdraw Peacekeepers from the Sinai

Aug. 28 2015

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 The jihadists’ increased sophistication, coupled with the Egyptian military’s outdated strategy, significantly endangers a peacekeeping operation that was previously considered very low-risk.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

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023