In rural Egypt a complex courtship with an uncertain outcome is under way between supporters of the venerable Muslim Brotherhood and backers of political newcomer, the stricter Islamist al-Nour Party.

While the party leaders may look on their rivals cautiously, many grassroots supporters are reluctant to criticise fellow Islamists even when competing in the first parliamentary poll since Hosni Mubarak’s repressive rule was swept away.

Many in the provincial capital Beni Suef and rural areas said differences between the Brotherhood, on the verge of power after 80 years of struggle, and the Salafi Nour Party, born in the months since Mubarak was ousted, were superficial or non-existent.

Between them, the two parties could form a majority bloc in parliament if initial trends in the phased election are, as expected, repeated across the country. The second round of voting was winding up in Beni Suef and elsewhere on Thursday.

If the Islamists did line up, it would be an important factor in determining the complexion of Egypt’s next government and its policies. But such an outcome is far from assured.

The leadership of the Brotherhood, the senior partner with the biggest bloc so far, is wary of a wholly Islamist ruling coalition, which Egyptians from other political trends might view as divisive and polarising in a period when they think broader national unity is needed.

But on the ground in the countryside many voters do not attach much importance to such subtleties. They look forward to what they see as a welcome and long-overdue experiment with Islamic government that embraces all like-minded parties.

“Of course the Islamists should be working as allies, because the Brothers and the Salafis (conservatives such as the Nour Party) are the same,” said Ahmed Sayed, a supporter of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party FJP.L.

“We’ve never tried the Islamists in government before, so now it’s their turn. God’s law must come first,” added his companion, hotel receptionist Mahmoud Zakaria, speaking in the town of Kafr Jumaa, about 120 km (80 miles) south of Cairo.

‘NO CONFLICT’

Essam Mohamed, a farmer in the town of al-Maimoun in Beni Suef province, said he had voted for the party list of the FJP and for two individual candidates from the Nour Party, reflecting the porosity between the Islamist groups.

“I see no conflict between them at all,” he said. “They are all excellent people, very respectable, with the same objectives.”

In Beni Suef, retired civil servant and Nour Party supporter Abdel Moneim Habeesh said an Islamist coalition would be good for Egypt. He blamed secularists and the media for promoting scepticism that the two Islamist groups would work together.

“The Nour Party will apply sharia (Islamic law) and do good things. The Freedom and Justice Party has the same agenda. It has been fighting against corruption, godlessness and subservience to foreigners since 1928, and now its time has come,” he added.

The national leadership of the Brotherhood might find it difficult to resist the grassroots support for an alliance that includes the Salafis, even if their initial preference is to seek allies closer to the political centre.

On the other hand, Nour Party members are likely to resent exclusion from government in favour of smaller groups such as liberals and leftists, which they consider to be unrepresentative of a generally pious electorate.

Despite the widespread expressions of solidarity between supporters of two Islamist groups, voters said they were aware that the Brotherhood and Nour Party had different perspectives.

“The Nour Party people are close to society. The Brotherhood are close to economics and politics. But it’s society that votes. That’s why everyone was surprised how many votes we won in the first round,” Aboul Walid el-Wardani, a Cairo chef helping the Nour Party with the elections in Beni Suef.

“But in the end we are all Muslims. It’s only interference by the media and the liberals that tries to stop us working together,” he added.

Nasser Khodeir, a civil engineer and Brotherhood supporter in the town of Tansa, said Brotherhood members were also Salafi in their beliefs but didn’t share the importance Salafis attach to physical appearance, such as clothing and the cut of the beard. Salafis favour robes or trouser cut off above the angle and long beards, usually with the moustache short or shaved off.

“Also the Brotherhood believes in gradualism, that you shouldn’t force people to change their behaviour, that it should be done by persuasion and consent,” he added.

But even after less than a year in open politics, the Salafis are evolving towards similar positions, he said.

The Nour Party is in fact an offshoot of the Salafi Call movement, which operated in Egypt under Mubarak but confined its activities to religious proselytising and charitable works.

After the fall of Mubarak, it built on the same social networks to create the political party.

(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

(The Nile in Cairo, July 2008/Daniel Mayer)

Islamists look set to dominate the next Egyptian parliament, but mutual suspicion between the two main groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nour Party, makes it unlikely they will join in an exclusive governing alliance.

The split in the Islamist camp leaves scope for liberals and secularists to play a part in the first post-election government and reduces the chances of any one group restoring the kind of de facto one-party rule that Egypt experienced from the 1950s until a popular uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak on February 11.

The Nour Party, created this year after Mubarak’s fall, is the largest of Egypt’s new Salafi parties, which draw support from ultra-conservative Muslims who try to emulate the example of the Prophet Muhammad and his 7th-century companions.

Its success in the first round of parliamentary elections, with 24.4 percent of the vote, has been the biggest surprise in the new political landscape. Most analysts expected the Salafis as a whole to win 10 to 15 percent of the vote.

Essam el-Erian, vice-president of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), told Reuters on Monday it was too early to say what form a ruling coalition might take because less than one third of parliamentary seats have been decided.

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The split in the Islamist camp leaves scope for liberals and secularists to play a part in the first post-election government and reduces the chances of any one group restoring the kind of de facto one-party rule that Egypt experienced from the 1950s until a popular uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak on February 11.

The Nour Party, created this year after Mubarak’s fall, is the largest of Egypt’s new Salafi parties, which draw support from ultra-conservative Muslims who try to emulate the example of the Prophet Muhammad and his 7th-century companions.

Its success in the first round of parliamentary elections, with 24.4 percent of the vote, has been the biggest surprise in the new political landscape. Most analysts expected the Salafis as a whole to win 10 to 15 percent of the vote.

Essam el-Erian, vice-president of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), told Reuters on Monday it was too early to say what form a ruling coalition might take because less than one third of parliamentary seats have been decided.

In the first round the FJP was way ahead of any rivals, with 36.6 percent of the vote.

“We are still in the Democratic Alliance and we are committed to our partners. We have never spoken about any other alliance,” Erian added. The alliance includes two non-religious parties, the Karama Party and the Ghad Party, although the Brotherhood is very much the dominant element.

Since Mubarak was ousted, the Brotherhood has emphasized the political reform agenda it shares with a broad range of groups that took part in the uprising, playing down the socially conservative agenda usually associated with Islamist movements.

“CENTRIST COALITION”

Erian told Reuters in October, before the level of popular support for the Salafis was evident, that the ultra-conservatives would be a burden on any coalition “because they are newcomers to political life (while) we have many years of experience and we are widespread all over the country.”

“A centrist coalition is what the Brotherhood wants, depending on the final results,” said political analyst Issandr el-Amrani. “They have reservations about the Salafis because they could be disruptive on domestic politics, with their mediaeval interpretations of Islamic law, for example.”

“But if the Salafis really end up with 25 percent of the vote, they will be a powerful force on cultural issues anyway,” he added.

Nour Party leader Emad Abdel Ghaffour, on the other hand, made clear he would not play second fiddle to the Brotherhood. “We hate being followers,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“They always say we take positions according to the Brotherhood but we have our own vision… There might be a consensus but … we will remain independent. We don’t rule out that they may marginalize us and portray us as the troublemaking bloc,” he added.

“The experiences of other parties who have allied with them (the Brotherhood) in the past are bitter. They always speak of it with reproach,” he said.

The Nour Party has indicated it wants to take part in government in partnership with others.

On Sunday two newspapers quoted party spokesman Nader Bakkar as saying Nour had proposed four ministers for a new cabinet that former Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri is now trying to form. The party later denied it had made any such proposal.

And Ali Abdel Al, writing in the Nour Party newspaper, said: “They (Islamists in general) believe in the need for partnership with the other political elements and parties that exist in the country, liberal and leftist, and the idea of forming a purely Islamist government might be unacceptable to their minds now more than any time in the past, for many reasons.”

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Analysts say a major pragmatic disincentive for Islamist leaders to go it alone in government is the knowledge that Egypt faces serious economic problems that might make it difficult for the Islamists to meet the expectations of their constituents.

The two most obvious areas are in banking and tourism. The Salafis want to phase out non-Islamic banking, the sale of alcohol and bare flesh on Egyptian beaches. But the government has interest-bearing obligations that do not mature until after 2020, and tourism, mainly for sun and sand, accounts for about 12 percent of the Egyptian economy.

“We have a plan to amend the banking law, but it’s difficult to put it into effect all at once, in case the economy collapses,” said Ashraf Thabet, one of the Nour Party’s new members of parliament, quoted in the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Both the Brotherhood and the Salafis share some long-term objectives and both have emphasized gradualism, persuasion and consensus in their aspirations to make Egypt more Islamic.

But the Brotherhood is an overtly modern organization led by middle-class professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers, with very few clerics as prominent members. The Salafists have more clerics in the leadership and appear to appeal to poorer sectors of society than the Brotherhood.

In voting in the rural province of Fayoum last week, farmers and their relatives voted for the Nour Party in large numbers, saying that they liked its Islamist program, that they knew the candidates and trusted they were clean and honest.

“I’m voting for the Nour Party because sharia (Islamic) law and religion are what matter most,” said Arafa Ahmed Abdel Kader, a factory technician. “And the candidates are people from the village, people that we know and trust,” he added.

In Cairo on Monday, voters had mixed opinions on whether the Brotherhood and the Salafis would work together to create a dominant Islamist bloc.

Secretary Nora Tawfik, 34, said she wanted the Brotherhood to link up with the liberal non-religious Egyptian Bloc, which has about 13 percent of the vote from the first stage.

“I would hope they would be pragmatic enough to ally with the Bloc to balance things out, but my gut feeling tells me that they will ally ideologically with Nour despite their differences now,” she added.

But Jihan Moussa, a 39-year-old pharmacist, said she thought the Brotherhood’s party would not ally with the Nour because of their ideological differences. “I am against also this idea of one party or thought being dominant because if that happens then they will most definitely turn into dictators,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Maha El Dahan, Tamim Elyan and Edmund Blair; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

“These protesters in Tahrir Square don’t want good for Egypt. They are out to destroy the country,” said the cobbler, who had pulled down the metal shutters of his tiny workshop to keep out the tear gas wafting down the street on a light breeze.

“Do you agree with what’s happening in this country?” asked the newspaper man, accosting the first customer he could find to vent his wrath against protesters who attacked three riot police trucks turning down a nearby side street on Saturday morning.

Abdel Fattah Nasser, a 42-year-old lawyer and spokesman for a Facebook group called the Silent Majority Coalition, says such people are part of his natural constituency: Egyptians who put stability before politics and whose voice is sometimes drowned out in the raucous debate between competing political factions. “Our main aim is to bring about stability,” he told Reuters.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has ruled Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak lost power in February, is gambling that such people really are the majority.

With their credibility on the line, their performance widely disparaged and even ridiculed, the generals maintain that the tens of thousands of Egyptians publicly demanding they quit do not represent the majority view of more than 80 million Egyptians.

The interim head of state and chairman of the council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, last week offered to hold a referendum on whether the council should stay in power to see through the long transition process the generals envisage, apparently confident that the people would support him.

But if this purported majority is silent, it is also so inactive that it’s hard to assess its real size.

When Nassar’s Facebook group, which has some 13,000 “like” endorsements, called for a mass rally in support of the military council, several thousand did show up, in a city of some 15 million, but the crowd was a fraction of the throng that flocked to Tahrir Square that day to call on the council to go.

Reliable opinion polls are few and far between in Egypt. But one survey of 750 Egyptians in October, conducted by Brookings and Zogby International, found that 43 percent thought the military authorities were slowing or reversing the gains of the revolution. Only 21 percent thought the opposite.

The past 10 days of unrest, in which more than 40 protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces, have further eroded support and sympathy for the military, at least among the significant political forces competing in this week’s elections.

The silent majority, if it exists, has not coalesced into a large political party. Former members of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party have regrouped into small parties but they have few election posters or stickers and rarely appear on television. Opinion polls conducted since February have hardly registered their existence.

The discourse of the silent majority, as expressed at rallies or on the Internet, bears a striking resemblance to that of Mubarak’s supporters during the last throes of his reign in February, with an emphasis on foreign conspiracies and the need for law and order to abort them.

The Silent Majority Coalition says in an official statement on its website that the West is hatching a plot to weaken and isolate Egypt by using its local agents to install an extreme Islamist government, which the West could then turn against as a threat to international peace and security.

“Through its agents throughout Egypt, the West will encourage strikes and sit-ins everywhere, in order to ensure that production does not return to full capacity … so the government will have to seek loans from international organizations subject to the United States and the Zionist lobby,” it adds.

Members of the military council have likewise accused some of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries of receiving finance from Western countries. Writer Alaa el-Aswany, who supports the revolutionaries, in turns accuses the generals of turning a blind eye to Gulf financial support for Islamist groups.

Ironically, while Western aid to the Tahrir Square groups is either unproven or very indirect, the military council itself still receives more than $1 billion a year from the United States, in what Egyptian generals have described in Wikileaks documents as the price for maintaining peace with Israel.

The size of the purported silent majority may not even matter, especially if it fails to vote in parliamentary elections starting on Monday.

Doctor Ahmed Hassan, who treated wounded demonstrators at a field clinic in Tahrir last week, dismissed the notion of a silent majority. “We call them the Couch Party. They will never get up off the couch, so we just have to press on,” he said.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon/Ruth Pitchford)

Clashes between security forces and protesters demanding an end to military rule have killed 36 people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere, and forced concessions from the military.

At a meeting with politicians on Tuesday, the ruling army council agreed to an accelerated handover of power to a civilian president in July to try to calm the protests. Parliamentary elections are to begin on Monday, as scheduled.

In Mutubis, away from the political hubbub in the capital, Mohamed Fadl, a Muslim Brotherhood member who scraped into parliament as an independent in 2005 despite gross and overt electoral abuses by police, said the unrest had had little impact in the constituency.

Politicians from the three main groups competing locally said they did not expect electoral abuses of the past to recur, mainly because the worst offenders, the police and the old ruling party, are out of the picture.

The police force collapsed on January 28, the fourth day of the popular uprising that brought down President Hosni Mubarak. The National Democratic Party (NDP), which ran parliament with large majorities for 30 years, was dissolved by court order in April.

“We are confident the elections will be clean this time, with no external interference,” said Fadl, who plans to run for parliament’s upper house in later polls.

“We have no fear of thuggery this time,” said Mahmoud al-Amrousi, local secretary-general of the liberal Wafd Party, Egypt’s oldest. “The remnants of the NDP are a small minority. Some are standing but they have no grassroots support.”

The elections are a major test of whether Egypt, governed by a military council since a popular uprising toppled Mubarak on February 11, can manage a tricky transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

In 2005 riot police sealed off polling stations to prevent any voting in areas the ruling party deemed sympathetic to Fadl, especially in Mutubis, his home town, which lies about 200 km (120 miles) northwest of Cairo. But they did not have the manpower to do the same across the whole constituency.

When women tried to break through to vote, the riot police beat them with sticks and eventually dispersed them with tear gas. Similar scenes took place in many parts of Egypt.

TROUBLED RUN-UP

At the national level, election preparations have been traumatic and uncertain. The army council repeatedly promised a law to exclude corrupt members of the former system but only announced it on Monday, in the thick of street protests.

Two provincial courts issued conflicting rulings on whether former NDP members could stand. Just two weeks before the start of voting, a higher court in Cairo decreed they could.

Deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Silmi stirred up a hornet’s nest by floating a document that would in effect have given the armed forces permanent immunity from civilian oversight.

That document may now be a dead letter, given the rage it has unleashed in city streets.

Police in Mutubis have been lying low since January, so much so that people complain more about their ineffectiveness than about their brutal treatment of the public, as in the old days.

“In the past, they would take people in and slap them across the face. Now if you call them to say your car’s been stolen, they might not even answer,” Fadl said.

Mutubis residents said the local contest was between the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, the clear frontrunner, the Salafi Islamists of the Nour (Light) Party, and the Wafd. NDP remnants are running locally as the Egyptian Citizen Party.

“The Freedom and Justice Party has a good reach in the street, because they have done many good things for the town,” said Kamal el-Abd, a small businessman who has not yet decided who to vote for. “There will be a big turnout because people are confident that the elections will be free,” he added.

SALAFI PARTY EMERGES

Judging by its visual presence in the form of posters, stickers and offices, the Nour Party has grown faster than any other in the region. It did not exist in the era of Mubarak, who did not allow political parties with overtly religious agendas.

Mohamed Nuaynaa, the party’s secretary in Mutubis, said most Nour Party activists used to help the independents of the Muslim Brotherhood in previous elections because they could not have a party or candidates of their own.

“We couldn’t express our real views. Now we hope to take 20 percent of the seats, but the really important thing is to have clean elections and a good turnout,” he added.

Since Mubarak’s overthrow, rural Egyptians have tended to be less critical of the military council than their urban compatriots, a trend reflected in an April referendum on constitutional amendments proposed by the council. Only a few urban centers rejected the amendments.

But the events of the past month, especially the Silmi document, have eroded the popularity of the generals and made the Islamists more wary of their intentions.

“We are against the document. It’s an attempt to circumvent the will of the people,” said Nuaynaa. “But we do still hope the military will carry out their promises.”

(Editing by Alistair Lyon and Jon Hemming)

His peace treaty with Israel still stands, the first between the Jewish state and any of its Arab neighbors, and after the openings Sadat gave to the private sector Egypt has evolved into a market economy that has turned its back on the socialist policies of the 1960s and early 1970s.

But eight months after the popular uprising that overthrew Mubarak on February 11, some aspects of Sadat’s legacy have vanished. Others, including the peace treaty itself, may have to adapt to the political transition that Egypt’s interim military leaders have initiated.

Tareq al-Zumur, one of the Islamists who took part in the conspiracy to assassinate Sadat, said Sadat had laid the groundwork for all the oppressive policies followed by Mubarak, who sat next to him as vice president at the parade on October 6, 1981, but that the 2011 uprising had set Egypt on a new democratic path of no-return.

“The Hosni Mubarak regime never strayed one inch from the policies followed by Sadat,” he told Reuters in an interview on the eve of the anniversary. If rigged elections were one of the hallmarks of the Mubarak era, Sadat set the trend in the elections of 1979, when he tried to ensure that no opponents of the peace treaty survived in parliament, he added.

But with the overthrow of Mubarak, the strict controls on political activity, which kept the powerful Islamist movement on the sidelines of public life for decades, broke down overnight.

The State Security police, which specialized in harassing the opposition, have had to change their name and give up some of their powers, even if critics say they continue many of the same old practices.

Close diplomatic and strategic cooperation with the United States, which Mubarak inherited from Sadat and made one of the fundamentals of Egyptian foreign policy, is now contested and may be an early casualty under a democratically elected government.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said in September that the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, one of the cornerstones of the Cairo-Washington relationship, was not sacrosanct and could be changed for the sake of peace or the good of the region.

“The Camp David agreement is not a sacred thing and is always open to discussion with what would benefit the region and the case of fair peace … and we could make a change if needed,” he told a Turkish television station.

Sharaf may have been thinking of minor, mutually agreed adjustments to the limits on Egyptian troop deployments in Sinai, but many of the revolutionaries who took to the streets in January envisage a more radical shift in relations with the Jewish state.

The crowds who penned Israeli embassy staff in their embassy in downtown Cairo on September 9 and removed the Israeli flag from the building for the second time this year said they wanted the embassy closed and the Israeli ambassador expelled.

The peace treaty is closely linked to the contentious question of U.S. military and economic aid to Egypt, which is running at about $1.5 billion a year, down from about $2 billion in Sadat’s last years, but still one of the largest packages any country receives from the United States.

When Sadat was in power and the Egyptian economy was on the ropes, U.S. aid in the form of wheat on concessional terms was sometimes the only thing that prevented a repetition of the bread riots of January 1977, one of the most serious crises Sadat ever faced.

The economic component of the aid has shrunk to less than $5 per Egyptian per year, from about $20 at 1970s values under Sadat, but the military component gives the United States leverage over the Egyptian generals who took over from Mubarak in February.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Cairo this week, tried to link Sadat and the Egyptian revolution, saying that Sadat died “for the cause of peace.” He added: “Now the people of Egypt have the opportunity to build on that important legacy that Anwar Sadat established.”

For Tareq al-Zumur, the lesson is quite the opposite. For him and for many others, the Egyptian revolution was a break from the legacy of both Sadat and Mubarak, and an assertion of the will of the Egyptian people, who largely remain hostile to Israeli and U.S. policies.

Not all Islamists agree, however. Nageh Ibrahim, a leading member of al-Gama’a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), which took up arms against Mubarak in the 1990s and lost, said Sadat had brought the Islamist movement many benefits and that in retrospect it was a mistake to kill him in 1981.

“(After the assassination) many doors for missionary activity were closed, all the benefits went to the leftists and the whole Islamist movement was harmed. Sadat had stopped torture and abolished emergency law, but we young people didn’t realize the value of those steps until after his death,” Ibrahim told Rose el-Youssef magazine.

One way or the other, one of the most significant changes since February has been the reversal in the fortunes of the Islamist movement, which Sadat initially promoted as a counterweight to his leftist and Arab nationalist enemies, and then began to suppress in his final months.

Now Islamists of all kinds — the Muslim Brotherhood, conservative salafists and post-modern liberal Islamists — are operating openly in Egypt and are likely to win many seats in the parliamentary elections scheduled to start in late November.

Even if that comes 30 years late, and in a popular and potentially democratic form that Sadat’s assassins did not envisage when they pumped dozens of bullets into his body, the change can be interpreted as a form of vindication.

The main assassin, Khaled al-Islambuli, boasted at his trial that he had killed the Pharaoh, a symbol of tyranny in Islamic tradition. But it took millions of people on the streets of Egypt, for 18 days in January and February, to topple the Pharaoh that succeeded him, possibly Egypt’s last.

“The January 25 revolution established new rules for running movements and reforming societies that do not at all include the use of violence,” said Zumur.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)

His peace treaty with Israel still stands, the first between the Jewish state and any of its Arab neighbours, and after the openings Sadat gave to the private sector Egypt has evolved into a market economy that has turned its back on the socialist policies of the 1960s and early 1970s.

But eight months after the popular uprising that overthrew Mubarak on Feb. 11, some aspects of Sadat’s legacy have vanished. Others, including the peace treaty itself, may have to adapt to the political transition that Egypt’s interim military leaders have initiated.

Tareq al-Zumur, one of the Islamists who took part in the conspiracy to assassinate Sadat, said Sadat had laid the groundwork for all the oppressive policies followed by Mubarak, who sat next to him as vice president at the parade on October 6, 1981, but that the 2011 uprising had set Egypt on a new democratic path of no-return.

“The Hosni Mubarak regime never strayed one inch from the policies followed by Sadat,” he told Reuters in an interview on the eve of the anniversary. If rigged elections were one of the hallmarks of the Mubarak era, Sadat set the trend in the elections of 1979, when he tried to ensure that no opponents of the peace treaty survived in parliament, he added.

But with the overthrow of Mubarak, the strict controls on political activity, which kept the powerful Islamist movement on the sidelines of public life for decades, broke down overnight.

The State Security police, which specialised in harassing the opposition, have had to change their name and give up some of their powers, even if critics say they continue many of the same old practices.

Close diplomatic and strategic cooperation with the United States, which Mubarak inherited from Sadat and made one of the fundamentals of Egyptian foreign policy, is now contested and may be an early casualty under a democratically elected government.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said in September that the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, one of the cornerstones of the Cairo-Washington relationship, was not sacrosanct and could be changed for the sake of peace or the good of the region.

“The Camp David agreement is not a sacred thing and is always open to discussion with what would benefit the region and the case of fair peace … and we could make a change if needed,” he told a Turkish television station.

Sharaf may have been thinking of minor, mutually agreed adjustments to the limits on Egyptian troop deployments in Sinai, but many of the revolutionaries who took to the streets in January envisage a more radical shift in relations with the Jewish state.

The crowds who penned Israeli embassy staff in their embassy in downtown Cairo on Sept. 9 and removed the Israeli flag from the building for the second time this year said they wanted the embassy closed and the Israeli ambassador expelled.

The peace treaty is closely linked to the contentious question of U.S. military and economic aid to Egypt, which is running at about $1.5 billion a year, down from about $2 billion in Sadat’s last years, but still one of the largest packages any country receives from the United States.

When Sadat was in power and the Egyptian economy was on the ropes, U.S. aid in the form of wheat on concessional terms was sometimes the only thing that prevented a repetition of the bread riots of January 1977, one of the most serious crises Sadat ever faced.

The economic component of the aid has shrunk to less than $5 per Egyptian per year, from about $20 at 1970s values under Sadat, but the military component gives the United States leverage over the Egyptian generals who took over from Mubarak in February.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Cairo this week, tried to link Sadat and the Egyptian revolution, saying that Sadat died “for the cause of peace”. He added: “Now the people of Egypt have the opportunity to build on that important legacy that Anwar Sadat established.”

For Tareq al-Zumur, the lesson is quite the opposite. For him and for many others, the Egyptian revolution was a break from the legacy of both Sadat and Mubarak, and an assertion of the will of the Egyptian people, who largely remain hostile to Israeli and U.S. policies.

Not all Islamists agree, however. Nageh Ibrahim, a leading member of al-Gama’a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), which took up arms against Mubarak in the 1990s and lost, said Sadat had brought the Islamist movement many benefits and that in retrospect it was a mistake to kill him in 1981.

“(After the assassination) many doors for missionary activity were closed, all the benefits went to the leftists and the whole Islamist movement was harmed. Sadat had stopped torture and abolished emergency law, but we young people didn’t realize the value of those steps until after his death,” Ibrahim told Rose el-Youssef magazine.

One way or the other, one of the most significant changes since February has been the reversal in the fortunes of the Islamist movement, which Sadat initially promoted as a counterweight to his leftist and Arab nationalist enemies, and then began to suppress in his final months.

Now Islamists of all kinds — the Muslim Brotherhood, conservative salafists and post-modern liberal Islamists — are operating openly in Egypt and are likely to win many seats in the parliamentary elections scheduled to start in late November.

Even if that comes 30 years late, and in a popular and potentially democratic form that Sadat’s assassins did not envisage when they pumped dozens of bullets into his body, the change can be interpreted as a form of vindication.

The main assassin, Khaled al-Islambuli, boasted at his trial that he had killed the Pharaoh, a symbol of tyranny in Islamic tradition. But it took millions of people on the streets of Egypt, for 18 days in January and February, to topple the Pharaoh that succeeded him, possibly Egypt’s last.

“The January 25 revolution established new rules for running movements and reforming societies that do not at all include the use of violence,” said Zumur.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Torn between the desire for stability and a full purge of the system which could extend turmoil that has cost the economy billions of dollars, many Egyptians have opted for the former.

That was what a referendum held on March 19 suggested when 77 percent of the voters backed constitutional amendments drawn up by a committee appointed by Egypt’s ruling military council.

More radical reformers, including youth groups who led the uprising that erupted on January 25, wanted a ‘No’ vote and an entirely new constitution. For them, the revolution is still incomplete.

But the mere fact Egyptians took part in a vote in which the result was not a foregone conclusion before polling stations opened is testimony to Egypt’s transformation from the 30 years of Mubarak’s rigged voting, police repression and corruption.

“There is no doubt there have been major developments like changes in the constitution, a new law for political parties, freedom of expression has been granted but still more needs to be done,” said political scientist Mustapha al-Sayyid.

“The outcome of the revolution will appear after elections. We will see if the people behind the revolution succeeded in reaching power to do what they want, or if it is remnants of the former regime, or if Islamists take power,” said Sayyid.

Youth groups and other protest movements which had drawn millions of Egyptians onto the streets, often using the Web and social media to mobilize, now have little time before a parliamentary election set for September to turn themselves into more formal political parties.

The Muslim Brotherhood, with a broad base despite decades of repression under Mubarak, is best placed to capitalize. Remnants of Mubarak’s old party network of notables in rural areas, local council officers and business executives are also well placed.

Seeking to assuage fears, the Brotherhood has said it will not seek a parliament majority this time or run for president.

“So far, the revolution is definitely incomplete. It has only accomplished 10 percent of its demands,” Sayyid Abu El Ela from the January 25 Youth Revolutionaries told Reuters.

ROLE MODEL

“Now the people have retreated and their will has switched to a revolution of reform, not of change. But the youth will continue to push for change,” he said.

How Egypt navigates the transition will have a wider impact.

Tunisia’s revolt may have preceded the Egyptian protests and Libya may be grabbing headlines for the violence wrought, but developments in the Arab world’s most populous country will reverberate more profoundly across the Middle East.

“What happens in Egypt is extremely important for the region. If there is stability in Egypt, then it rubs off on others. It is like a role model,” said Kamran Bokhari, regional director for Stratfor.

The army has shown little interest in staying in government, even though all Egypt’s presidents since the monarchy was overthrown in 1952 were officers. The army has pushed for swift elections.

But even when the officers return to barracks, the military is expected to loom in the background. Bokhari said it could take a behind-the-scenes political role as Turkey’s army did for decades or as Pakistan’s military still does.

“The revolution that people talk about is a very incomplete one. They removed the president and transferred power to the armed forces,” said one Western diplomat.

But the political changes are nonetheless dramatic.

Mubarak and his family are under house arrest in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the ruling National Democratic Party is in tatters, the feared State Security agency has been scrapped and the cabinet contains no one unacceptable to the revolutionaries.

Several former ministers and other top party or government officials are in detention and others are being probed over their business dealings. New parties of many colors are taking shape, including one that will represent the Brotherhood.

Constitutional amendments approved in the referendum may not go as far as radicals wanted, but still reshape the landscape.

The amendments restrict the president to two four-year terms, make it easier for independents to run for the presidency and restore judicial supervision of votes, a guarantee against rigging practiced by the NDP and police in 2005 and 2010.

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

Radicals still see more to be done. An emergency law, introduced after Mubarak’s predecessor was assassinated by Islamists in 1981, has still not been lifted. The army promised it would go before elections but has not been more precise.

Also raising concern is a law restricting strikes by increasingly assertive Egyptian workers. The government says it is to stop a wave of protests over low wages that have crippled the economy. Activists see it as an attack on new found freedoms.

Getting the economy back on track is one of the biggest challenges for whoever rules. Egypt’s young population wants both more political openness and new economic opportunities, instead of the wealth divisions that grew wider under Mubarak.

The new Manpower Minister Ahmed El Borai outlined the scale of challenge in meeting that demand. He put unemployment at 19 percent, roughly double the figure Mubarak’s cabinet declared.

Economic disruptions since January will cut economic growth to 3.5 to 4 percent of national output in the year to June, from earlier estimates of 5.8 to 6 percent. Analysts say Egypt needs at least 6 percent simply to create enough work for new job entrants.

Tourism, which usually generates over $10 billion a year, is only just starting to recover from January’s mass exodus.

Foreign investors, who had poured in billions of dollars, are now keeping their distance until Egypt’s political future becomes clearer. Many factories operated at well below capacity in February because of curfews and insecurity.

If they are to maintain their drive for a deeper political overhaul, new groups, mainly liberals and those opposed to the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda, need time to organize and mobilize supporters after decades in the wilderness.

Mubarak cracked down hard on liberal challengers, partly so that he could portray the Brotherhood as the only alternative to his own autocracy, a choice that helped secure him the support of the West who have proved fearful of Islamists in power.

Analysis of the referendum results show that the ‘No’ votes were concentrated in urban areas with relatively high literacy, suggesting that the arguments of the young revolutionaries did not have much impact in rural areas where illiteracy is widespread and people take less interest in public affairs.

Liberals were quick to blame their relatively poor showing on scare stories spread by conservatives, along the lines that voting ‘No’ would lead to prolonged chaos.

Many ‘Yes’ voters in the referendum said they were guided, not by Islamists or other political forces, but by a desire to see a quick return to civilian government and more emphasis on law and order and on stimulation of the economy.

Mohamed Mustafa, who voted ‘Yes’ in Cairo’s suburb of Maadi, said the calls from more radical reformers for writing a new constitution would take too much time. “So we should leave that till later. We need the country to move ahead now,” he added.

Mahmoud Salem, a liberal who blogged against Mubarak for years under the pseudonym Sandmonkey, said the protest movement had lost touch with ordinary people’s aspirations.

“You care about the revolution and the arrest of NDP figures and getting the country on the right track. They care about economic security, the return of stability and normalcy the fastest way possible,” he wrote.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Marwa Awad; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Torn between the desire for stability and a full purge of the system which could extend turmoil that has cost the economy billions of dollars, many Egyptians have opted for the former.

That was what a referendum held on March 19 suggested when 77 percent of the voters backed constitutional amendments drawn up by a committee appointed by Egypt’s ruling military council.

More radical reformers, including youth groups who led the uprising that erupted on Jan. 25, wanted a ‘No’ vote and an entirely new constitution. For them, the revolution is still incomplete.

But the mere fact Egyptians took part in a vote in which the result was not a foregone conclusion before polling stations opened is testimony to Egypt’s transformation from the 30 years of Mubarak’s rigged voting, police repression and corruption.

“There is no doubt there have been major developments like changes in the constitution, a new law for political parties, freedom of expression has been granted but still more needs to be done,” said political scientist Mustapha al-Sayyid.

“The outcome of the revolution will appear after elections. We will see if the people behind the revolution succeeded in reaching power to do what they want, or if it is remnants of the former regime, or if Islamists take power,” said Sayyid.

Youth groups and other protest movements which had drawn millions of Egyptians onto the streets, often using the Web and social media to mobilise, now have little time before a parliamentary election set for September to turn themselves into more formal political parties.

The Muslim Brotherhood, with a broad base despite decades of repression under Mubarak, is best placed to capitalise. Remnants of Mubarak’s old party network of notables in rural areas, local council officers and business executives are also well placed.

Seeking to assuage fears, the Brotherhood has said it will not seek a parliament majority this time or run for president.

“So far, the revolution is definitely incomplete. It has only accomplished 10 percent of its demands,” Sayyid Abu El Ela from the January 25 Youth Revolutionaries told Reuters.

ROLE MODEL

“Now the people have retreated and their will has switched to a revolution of reform, not of change. But the youth will continue to push for change,” he said.

How Egypt navigates the transition will have a wider impact.

Tunisia’s revolt may have preceded the Egyptian protests and Libya may be grabbing headlines for the violence wraught, but developments in the Arab world’s most populous country will reverberate more profoundly across the Middle East.

“What happens in Egypt is extremely important for the region. If there is stability in Egypt, then it rubs off on others. It is like a role model,” said Kamran Bokhari, regional director for Stratfor.

The army has shown little interest in staying in government, even though all Egypt’s presidents since the monarchy was overthrown in 1952 were officers. The army has pushed for swift elections.

But even when the officers return to barracks, the military is expected to loom in the background. Bokhari said it could take a behind-the-scenes political role as Turkey’s army did for decades or as Pakistan’s military still does.

“The revolution that people talk about is a very incomplete one. They removed the president and transferred power to the armed forces,” said one Western diplomat.

But the political changes are nonetheless dramatic.

Mubarak and his family are under house arrest in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the ruling National Democratic Party is in tatters, the feared State Security agency has been scrapped and the cabinet contains no one unacceptable to the revolutionaries.

Several former ministers and other top party or government officials are in detention and others are being probed over their business dealings. New parties of many colours are taking shape, including one that will represent the Brotherhood.

Constitutional amendments approved in the referendum may not go as far as radicals wanted, but still reshape the landscape.

The amendments restrict the president to two four-year terms, make it easier for independents to run for the presidency and restore judicial supervision of votes, a guarantee against rigging practised by the NDP and police in 2005 and 2010.

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

Radicals still see more to be done. An emergency law, introduced after Mubarak’s predecessor was assassinated by Islamists in 1981, has still not been lifted. The army promised it would go before elections but has not been more precise.

Also raising concern is a law restricting strikes by increasingly assertive Egyptian workers. The government says it is to stop a wave of protests over low wages that have crippled the economy. Activists see it as an attack on new found freedoms.

Getting the economy back on track is one of the biggest challenges for whoever rules. Egypt’s young population wants both more political openness and new economic opportunities, instead of the wealth divisions that grew wider under Mubarak.

The new Manpower Minister Ahmed El Borai outlined the scale of challenge in meeting that demand. He put unemployment at 19 percent, roughly double the figure Mubarak’s cabinet declared.

Economic disruptions since January will cut economic growth to 3.5 to 4 percent of national output in the year to June, from earlier estimates of 5.8 to 6 percent. Analysts say Egypt needs at least 6 percent simply to create enough work for new job entrants.

Tourism, which usuallly generates over $10 billion a year, is only just starting to recover from January’s mass exodus.

Foreign investors, who had poured in billions of dollars, are now keeping their distance until Egypt’s political future becomes clearer. Many factories operated at well below capacity in February because of curfews and insecurity.

If they are to maintain their drive for a deeper political overhaul, new groups, mainly liberals and those opposed to the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda, need time to organise and mobilise supporters after decades in the wilderness.

Mubarak cracked down hard on liberal challengers, partly so that he could portray the Brotherhood as the only alternative to his own autocracy, a choice that helped secure him the support of the West who have proved fearful of Islamists in power.

Analysis of the referendum results show that the ‘No’ votes were concentrated in urban areas with relatively high literacy, suggesting that the arguments of the young revolutionaries did not have much impact in rural areas where illiteracy is widespread and people take less interest in public affairs.

Liberals were quick to blame their relatively poor showing on scare stories spread by conservatives, along the lines that voting ‘No’ would lead to prolonged chaos.

Many ‘Yes’ voters in the referendum said they were guided, not by Islamists or other political forces, but by a desire to see a quick return to civilian government and more emphasis on law and order and on stimulation of the economy.

Mohamed Mustafa, who voted ‘Yes’ in Cairo’s suburb of Maadi, said the calls from more radical reformers for writing a new constitution would take too much time. “So we should leave that till later. We need the country to move ahead now,” he added.

Mahmoud Salem, a liberal who blogged against Mubarak for years under the pseudonym Sandmonkey, said the protest movement had lost touch with ordinary people’s aspirations.

“You care about the revolution and the arrest of NDP figures and getting the country on the right track. They care about economic security, the return of stability and normalcy the fastest way possible,” he wrote.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Marwa Awad; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Voters in a constitutional referendum in Egypt on Saturday could hardly believe it. Men in their 50s said they were voting for the first time in their lives, because in past elections they saw no point even trying to cast a ballot.

At parliamentary elections in 2005 and 2010 abuses were widespread.

Then, witnesses saw riot police denying voters access to polling stations, clerks stuffing boxes with unused ballots, and armed thugs hired by candidates from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) intimidating anyone who might vote for a rival.

In 2010 even judges were absent, written out of the procedures in constitutional amendments which ignored opposition and civil society objections. The result was a parliament in which deposed President Hosni Mubarak’s party held all but a handful of seats.

But now Mubarak is out of power, the old parliament has been dissolved and the NDP hardly exists as a political force. The popular uprising that broke out on January 25 has transformed the political landscape.

“There’s a massive difference. In the past the thugs would let in only those they wanted,” said Mustafa Abdel Kader, a lawyer who voted on Saturday morning in Helwan, south of Cairo.

“It was totally rigged.”

Despite voting being overwhelmingly calm, a crowd blocked Mohamed ElBaradei from entering a Cairo polling station, shoving him and smashing his car window with rocks as he left. The retired United Nations diplomat turned activist who led an opposition movement plans to run for president.

POLICE WATCH, DON’T INTERFERE

In the village of Fahmeen, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Cairo, policemen lounged around the gateway to a primary school as villagers went in to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the amendments.

The changes would open up presidential elections to more candidates, limit the president to two four-year terms, restore judicial supervision of elections and require the next parliament to make a complete overhaul of the old constitution.

In some areas in the past the police played a role in the manifold rigging arrangements, turning a blind eye to the presence of armed thugs and driving away independent monitors and the agents of unapproved candidates.

But at five polling stations visited on Saturday the police kept their distance and let everyone approach the polling station officers without interference.

Voters presented their national identity cards to a clerk, who registered their names and numbers and gave them a voting paper. Once they had made their choice they dropped their papers into a glass-fronted ballot box.

To reassure voters, this time the clerks will count the votes in situ at the end of the day in the presence of the judicial official assigned to that station.

In the past the ballot boxes went to counting centers controlled by the police and the local authorities. In 2005 disgruntled judges reported that in some cases the officials invented the numbers.

“I’m voting for the first time ever because I know there will be a fair result. We feel that our voice will be heard,” said Ahmed Essawi, 52, a manager at a cement factory. “This time there will be value added.”

“IT WAS ALWAYS FAKE”

“In the past it was always fake. People would threaten you before you even went in. So voting was a risking business and it had no meaning anyway,” he added.

Mohamed Mustafa, a 40-year-old company worker in Cairo’s Maadi suburb, agreed. “I never voted before. The elections were not proper. But definitely this time it looks good,” he said.

The military council that has run Egypt since February 11 has not campaigned one way or another on the constitutional amendments, drafted by a military appointed committee.

But the debate has been lively, roughly divided between Islamists and conservatives who favor the amendments on one side and, on the other side, liberals and secularists who say the old constitution no longer has any legitimacy and should be replaced before any elections take place.

The Muslim Brotherhood, probably the largest single political movement in the country, has argued for a ‘yes’ vote.

Its opponents say the new political forces that led the uprising need more time to organize, or else the Brotherhood and the remnants of the old ruling party will dominate the next parliament and draft a new constitution to suit their interests.

Although the military council has suspended Mubarak’s constitution, a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum will temporarily reactivate it with only modest changes. The vast powers of the presidency, for example, will stay in place.

“I’m going to vote ‘no’ because we have to start from scratch. The constitution must come from the revolution and the new generation is not ready to take part in elections,” said Essawi.

But Murad Abdel Nabi, a voter in the village of Ikhsas south of Cairo, disagreed. “I’m voting ‘yes’ so that the revolution will be stable, for the safety of the country,” he said.