As protesters continue to occupy Tahrir square, and the military continues the crackdown with impunity, divisions erupt.
Mark LeVine
Al-Jazeera
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Better than Gaza
I met up with a friend, one of the founders of the Gaza Youth Breaks Out movement, who had been in Tahrir almost continuously since the outbreak of fighting last Saturday. He is literally in exile in Cairo, as Hamas let it be known in no uncertain terms that, should he return home again any time soon they'd pick him up. For him and a significant number of other Gaza youth activists who have migrated to Cairo - and now Tahrir - in recent weeks, there is literally nowhere else to be but in Tahrir at this moment.
"There is nothing to do in Gaza now. At least here we can join the struggle," he explained as we wandered through the various tent neighbourhoods of the square....
For my friend and his fellow Gazan activists, Tahrir with its tension and tear gas is a far better feeling than he could experience back home. Despite spending the past week at the front lines of Muhammad Mahmoud street fighting the Security Police with neither gas mask nor bandana, Abu Yazan was clearly invigorated by the whole experience.....
But my friend was worried about the likely electoral victory of the Brotherhood. "I keep telling people I meet, 'I'm from Gaza, and trust me, you don't want the Islamists in power.'" It's a message that, not surprisingly, is finding increasing support in Tahrir - given the Brotherhood's self-serving dalliances with SCAF to ensure its electoral victory. But it's also resonant in regions such as Sinai, where residents more routinely come into contact with people from Gaza and are already well aware of the what a religiously dominated political system could mean....
The revolutionaries behind the overthrow of Mubarak and the continued challenge to the system are some of the most progressive activists anywhere, and the protesters battling the SCAF and its thugs are as brave as any in the world. But no matter who wins the war between the nitham - "the system" - and the people, Egypt has a hard and dark road ahead before it can create a truly democratic system that breaks the chains of violence, repression, corruption and patriarchy that have held it down for more than half a century.
"There is no Plan B to the revolution" reads one slogan in Tahrir. Where Plan A takes Egypt is still anyone's guess."
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