monitors who will be in both israel and gaza to oversee the cease-fire. so egypt does have leverage. egypt has long played this role as an intermediary. you have an assertive government in egypt under president sisi that wants to assume the country's traditional leadership. he wants to be very much like mubarak. egypt went through the arab spring. it had its own period of muslim brotherhood rule, and now i think you're seeing egypt try and go back to the egypt that the world knew before as a player in the middle east peace process. that was something that president mubarak was very proud of, that he had that portfolio of middle east peace in his deck of cards. >> and, richard, how effective was the united states as an interlocutor. we saw the white house being very sort of careful but also somewhat transparent about their