Egyptian military and Islamists unite against liberals?

While the US calls the recent military raid on Egyptian NGOs "inconsistent with the bilateral cooperation” Middle East expert Lawrence Davidson believes the military and the Islamists may have reached some agreement that excludes the liberal element.

The professor of Middle East History at West Chester University in the US explained in an interview with RT that in his view there are three power centers evolving in Egypt.First is the military, which sees itself as the founder of modern Egypt. Another is the Islamists, who have done very well in the elections. And the third, lesser, yet still important, power is made up of secular and liberal elements who, he believes, were the target of the raids on NGOs.According to Davidson this indicates that the military and Islamist parties have reached “some sort of agreement as to how the future of Egypt is going to go.”He adds that the liberal element is “the most adamant” when it comes to the handover of power from the ruling military to a civilian government. Generally, he believes, the Egyptian military are not going to give full control to civilian rulers. “My guess is that the Islamic groups have somehow made an accommodation with that present reality,” he said.The mistake of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak was that the focus was on one man rather than on a system, he underlines.But now “the demonstrators have learned the lesson that it’s the system they have to go after,” Lawrence states.The problem, however, for the ongoing protest movement is that the rest of Egypt, including the business sector, the rural population and the Islamists “don’t seem ready to back the protest to the point of destroying the system and building a new one,” he concludes.