Free Republic

The Egyptian government is set to declare on Wednesday that foreign mediation efforts to end the political crisis in the country have failed, Reuters reported Tuesday night, citing the Al-Ahram newspaper. … It would also declare that Muslim Brotherhood protests against the army’s overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi were non-peaceful—a signal that the government intends to end them by force. The report appeared hours after two senior U.S. senators on a mediation mission said they considered Morsi’s removal to have been a military coup—causing an uproar in the Egyptian media and drawing a strong riposte from the acting president. The...

A polarized Egypt will likely remain enveloped in violence because the Muslim Brotherhood lacks incentive to rejoin the political process, a regional expert said Monday. Almost 300 people have died since Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed President Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, on July 3. Morsi’s authoritarian rule prompted secular Egyptians and others to back the military’s actions, but supporters of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood argue that the country’s first democratically elected leader should be reinstated. The Muslim Brotherhood has refused to “swallow the reality” of Morsi’s exit, despite pleas from international diplomats and an offer by the military...