Newspapers followed the Muslim Brotherhood's plans to escalate their confrontation with the people and the army whether in Cairo, Sinai or elsewhere. Al-Shorouk on Monday had ‘Ten-member committee today starts accepting suggestions amending the constitution', and Al-Watan on the same day shed light on ‘the MB plan to escalate: a sit-in at foreign embassies to embarrass Al-Sisi'. Al-Tahrir on Sunday had ‘MB failed in ruling... and in protests'. Al-Wafd wrote ‘Thwarting a conspiracy to establish ‘a free army'”, and Al-Akhbar had ‘Conspiracy by Hamas and the MB to launch attacks in Sinai revealed'. Writers also looked at the possible aim of the MB's repeated attempts to escalate its confrontation with the army. Emad Al-Ghazali emphasised that 30 June was a revolution rather than a coup because the army was forced — amid the influx of millions — to bow to the will of the people. The army commander clearly declared that he would not take part in the political track and resumed his mission of protecting the borders and national security of the country. However, Al-Ghazali elaborated, the core and crux behind 30 June was not ousting Morsi but revealing that Egyptians in general reject the political project of the MB and other Islamist parties. In that respect, any talk about reconciliation would be like closing a wound without cleaning it. Thus, Al-Ghazali concluded, any reconciliation at present should be within a political and legal framework that separates religion from politics and bans using religious slogans in politics. “There is no use for any reconciliation that is not based on optimum transparency and on the fact that the MB is an NGO that should abide by the laws applied to all other NGOs,” Al-Ghazali wrote in the independent daily Al-Shorouk. Ibrahim Mansour talked about the various kinds of legitimacy that the MB used to rule with. He wrote that the MB respected neither revolutionary legitimacy nor that of the ballot box. “All they cared for was the name of their group.” They resorted to another kind of legitimacy: persuading the army generals of the ruling military council at the time that they are the only power capable of assuming responsibility. That was the legitimacy of lying and cheating. Later on, Mansour continued, they resorted to another kind of legitimacy, the legitimacy of threatening to spill blood. In the period before the declaration of the results of the presidential elections, they managed to forge the electoral database, prevented Christians from voting and committed other offences in order to guarantee that Morsi would win. And he won — unjustly. After that Morsi tried to return the disbanded parliament, issued an illegal and despotic constitutional declaration on 22 November and issued an invalid and void constitution. The people could not accept these invalid policies of the MB, protested against them and toppled them. “The legitimacy of the MB is a falsehood based on lying, cheating and terrorism,” Mansour concluded in the independent daily Al-Tahrir. Abbas Al-Tarabili asked why the MB did not accept to serve the majority of the people while it was in power. Instead of serving the people, Al-Tarabili explained, they focused on Brotherhoodising most of the state's top positions and monopolising power. They are trying to adopt the same strategy now, added Tarabili. They try to protest in different places to give the impression that they are strong and influential. “The MB went to Al-Azhar, Manial, Ramses Square and the October flyover in the hope of confusing the army. But by so doing, they succeeded in provoking the people against them,” Al-Tarabili wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. He concluded his regular column by calling on the MB to accept the de facto situation and end their protest before they lose everything. Galal Dweidar wrote that the incredulousness of the MB has become so obvious after its repeated attempts to control and monopolise the country. The scepticism was shown again in the MB and its supreme guide's two messages posted on social networks. They tried via these messages to draw a comparison between the “great victory of the army on 10 Ramadan and the toppling of the MB regime”. These messages, Dweidar added, are another proof of the lying and lack of transparency of the MB who never recognised the 10 Ramadan victory in the past. When they tried to commemorate it last October in the presence of Morsi, he not only failed to mention the name of former president Anwar Al-Sadat, the leader of the war, but also invited his assassin to the celebration. “The message of the MB and the supreme guide on the anniversary of the 10 Ramadan war is more proof of their ill intentions and lack of credibility,” he summed up his column in the official daily Al-Akhbar. Nehal Ahdi asked what the MB wants: to continue their sit-in in Rabaa and gather their followers who include refugees from Syria and Iraq, and block a few streets to prove to the world that Morsi's supporters are in the millions and that he should return to office. The MB knows that Morsi will never return, Ahdi said. They know there is a new reality on the ground: an interim president, a government, a constitutional declaration and a committee to prepare the constitution. They know that Morsi will never return and that their dream would never be realised “because the great Egyptians have stopped them”. Youth, Ahdi added, defeated the MB through a petition. They did not make the same mistakes of youths after 25 January. “Oh Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi will never rule again. And his future will be either in prison or outside his country which rejects liars and cowards,” Ahdi wrote in the independent daily Al-Watan.
