The volatile situation in Egypt prompted several writers to analyse its causes and possible way out. Elias Harfoush wrote that Egypt sows what Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi planted. Harfoush ascribed the division in the Egyptian streets to the way the Muslim Brotherhood has been running Egypt since the revolution, namely by taking decisions unilaterally. Thus, the Port Said events appeared to Harfoush as a mere repetition — albeit more bloody — to what is going on in the streets of Egypt since the revolution. In that atmosphere, the writer saw Morsi's call for dialogue as too late and made under the pressure of bloody clashes. However, his call for other parties to respect the rule of law, he added, was unconvincing because his supporters had broke the law when they imposed a siege around the constitutional court and attacked judges who declined to supervise the constitutional referendum. “The Egyptian revolution was supposed to heal the rift between the supporters of the previous regime and the rest of the society. It was supposed to unite the targets and ambitions of the Egyptians,” Harfoush wrote in the pan-Arab political daily Al-Hayat. But, Harfoush elaborated, the MB's unilateral rule together with impeding any attempts for dialogue, and using religion as a tool to rule contributed to dividing society in Egypt and regarding state institutions as the tools of the ruling party. Sultan Al-Hattab raised the question of imposing emergency laws, in the Jordanian daily Al-Rai. He asked the MB branch in Jordan about their opinion in imposing emergency laws in Egypt and whether they think the MB in Egypt changed when they assumed power. “Declaring emergency laws took Egypt back to square one and limited their choices. They did not protest and get killed to substitute a regime that ended the emergency laws under pressure of the streets to another regime that imposed emergency laws when they couldn't convince people to accept dialogue,” Al-Hattab wrote. Ahmed Youssef Ahmed said nobody would have imagined back in January 2011 that the second anniversary of the revolution would see such violence. The revolutionary powers, Ahmed wrote in the United Arab Emirates daily Al-Ittihad, thought that the moment Mubarak stepped down would be a rebirth for Egypt. However, the failure of these powers to have a leader led to the ascendance of the MB to power and the start of polarisation between the Islamists and the other powers which took part in the revolution. But Ahmed believed that the dangerous twist between the authority and the opposition was when Morsi issued the constitutional declaration that made his decisions immune. However, the more dangerous turn, Ahmed added, came when the MB used their supporters to lay siege to the constitutional court to stop it from issuing a ruling regarding the constitutional committee that drafted the constitution. Various factors, he explained, like stealing the revolution, encroaching on the judiciary and others led to the explosion of violence in the second anniversary of the revolution. The verdict on the Port Said genocide contributed to igniting more violence. “The 25 January Revolution is at a crossroads. Officials can either understand the factors that led to violence and try to find a political way out that would put an end to violence and counter violence or insist on following the same track which would lead to more violence and polarisation,” Ahmed wrote. The situation in Syria is not getting any better and the casualties are on the increase. However, while many commentators believed that the fall of the present regime is a matter of time, President Bashar Al-Assad suggested holding a comprehensive dialogue that would lead to a political resolution to the Syrian crisis. The Syrian daily Tishreen hailed Al-Assad's plan. Ahmed Sawwan pointed to the quick and immediate response to Al-Assad's vision for dialogue and that the formation of the committees to hold it reflected the genuine wish to resolve the Syrian crisis. The disclosure of a national political programme, Sawwan added, showed that Syria is strong with its people, army and sovereign decision making. “Syria with its national sovereignty, the unity of the people and the army and national unity was capable of confronting its enemies and withstanding the ferocious war that some foreign terrorists launched against it,” he wrote. The article pointed to some countries that support these “terrorists”, namely the US, Britain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and France together with other powers from the Arab and Islamic world. Sawwan concluded that Syria is capable of thwarting all the conspiracies against it and providing all the care for its citizens. And these capabilities boost the credibility of the political programme that would lead to dialogue and political resolution. Abdel-Rahman Al-Rashed who believed that the fall of Al-Assad regime is only a matter of time, looked at the various scenarios that Israel drew for post-Assad Syria. Al-Rashed wrote that the war in Syria is of concern to the Israelis because its repercussions are as dangerous as those of the October 1973 War. The fall of the Al-Assad regime would possibly change the map and the balance of power in the region. In the first year of the war, the writer explained, the Israelis did not believe that Al-Assad's steel regime would fall. However, by the beginning of the second year, they believed that his fall is inevitable. Israel has justified reasons to worry unless it takes part in redrawing the regional map. Al-Rashed argued in the London-based political daily Asharq Al-Awsat that there are four scenarios to the Syrian tragedy: the regime will fall and a weak state will be established by a feeble opposition on a dilapidated state; the regime will fall but the civil war will continue; Al-Assad and his gang will escape to the seaside and establish an independent Alawite state and in that case the war will continue; and the least likely scenario, that the situation remains as it is and the war will last for a long time. All these scenarios would serve Israel. “The only option that would not have suited Tel Aviv is international intervention a year ago. That would have created a democratic Syrian regime that has international support. That would have made Syria — which has a population that is triple that of Israel — a strong neighbour with a popular regime.”
