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.