Keep the U.S. in the Observer Mission to Monitor the Egyptian-Israeli Peace

The image of an Obama administration leading the nation in retreat from the Middle East, abandoning traditional allies and ceding the field to Iran and other rising adversaries, has descended on Washington these days like an army of cheap suits. Fair or not, the trope of President Obama as the disengager-in-chief seems to have stuck even among some Democrats uncomfortable with his risk-averse policies on Syria and Iraq.

Adding to the sense of retrenchment was a recent editorial in the New York Times calling for the end to U.S. participation in the Multinational Force Observer (MFO) mission that has monitored the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty since 1982. The Times quotes Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who asserts that the threat to the MFO in Sinai is only going to rise. Whether the Pentagon is laying the groundwork to reassess, or even end, the U.S. mission is unknown. To end it would be a grave mistake, a betrayal of two important U.S. allies and a signal that America was abandoning the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty, perhaps its most seminal contribution to Middle East stability in half a century.

The concern about jihadists operating in Sinai and threatening the MFO is very real. The rise of the Islamic State and of the jihadist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which has already been responsible for a number of bloody attacks against Egyptian forces, have added to the instability in an increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula, which is large and impossible to monitor, let alone control. Alienated by Cairo’s policies of neglect, Sinai’s Bedouin have become willing targets of recruitment by Salafist and other jihadist groups eager to involve them in smuggling and terrorist enterprises. As Dempsey testified to Congress last month, the threat is likely to increase. Indeed, the greatest current risk to the MFO comes from the risk of U.S. soldiers being caught in the crossfire between jihadist groups and Egyptian security forces. 

No one wants to play fast and loose with the lives of the 1,600-plus members of the Multinational Force Organization, almost half of whom are Americans. So let’s withdraw or phase out the MFO over time, the argument goes; maybe we can find technical means to monitor the peace treaty and find other counterterrorism tactics to combat the jihadists operating there. After all, the treaty no longer needs to be monitored. Egyptian–Israeli relations are the best they’ve ever been. Let those two nations handle the problem, or just replace the U.S. contingent in the MFO with a contingent from some other country. Our men and women in uniform are already too exposed around the world and particularly in a dangerous, angry, and virulently anti-American Middle East.

To pull the U.S. out of the MFO, or even to start a process designed to do so gradually, would be a serious blow not just to Egyptian–Israeli relations but to America’s standing across the region.

None of these alternatives are feasible — or desirable, despite the risks that the MFO arrangement poses to American forces. To pull the U.S. out of the MFO, or even to start a process designed to do so gradually, would be a serious blow not just for the situation in Sinai and to Egyptian–Israeli relations but to America’s standing across the region. To abandon the MFO would make the U.S. less credible as a great power in the eyes of our allies and enemies alike.

We would weaken the glue that binds Egypt and Israel in their current relationship, which the presence of an American go-between has done so much to promote. A threatened Soviet veto to any Security Council resolution establishing a peacekeeping force to implement the Treaty of Peace in 1981 proved fortunate, leading the U.S., Israel, and Egypt to establish the unique structure of the MFO. U.S. boots on the ground have been crucial, and remain so, in holding together both the MFO itself and, more important, Egyptian–Israeli peace.

It’s sad that the Egyptian–Israeli relationship was never transformed by the peace treaty into a warm and close relationship between the publics of both countries and remains largely a transactional business deal between both governments that serves each side’s needs. The Iranian threat, married to that from Hamas and the Sunni jihadists, has brought Cairo and Jerusalem closer together. America has had a critical role to play in the MFO, giving the Egyptians and the Israelis a structure and an incentive to cooperate in Sinai. And Washington has averted more than one crisis in the relationship. In 2012, when Egypt unilaterally moved forces into the Sinai without agreement from Israel, the MFO facilitated a peaceful resolution sought by the U.S.

Indeed, there’s a reason that the 1979 peace treaty brokered by the U.S. ended up being monitored by an MFO rather than by U.N. peacekeepers. Washington was the only party that both Egypt and Israel could trust, and each one trusted Washington more than it trusted the other.

Then there are the broader risks of tampering with the status quo, let alone abandoning the MFO. The region is in turmoil. New power balances are emerging. Iran is rising; the so-called Arab Spring has resulted in varying degrees of meltdown or dysfunction in key Arab states; and U.S. relations with its traditional partners — Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — are under serious strain. However imperfect the 1979 treaty is, it remains not just the symbol of the success of American diplomacy but a practical instrument for keeping two critically important U.S. partners engaged with one another and with Washington. Signaling a change in America’s commitment to the MFO in Sinai, as the Islamic State roars across the region, would reverberate from Riyadh to Jerusalem to Teheran, where there is already growing sentiment that America is in retreat. If necessary, beef up security for the MFO in Sinai. Don’t abandon it.