Egypt crisis: tanks deployed at presidential palace - live updates

The Guardian

"Dialogue with Morsi difficult after 'brutal mess'

“It was a brutal, brutal mess,” says Abdel-Rahman Hussein in Cairo after witnessing pro and anti-Morsi supporters throw stones, petrol bombs and trade gun shots with each other in overnight clashes.
It was Morsi supporters who escalated the violence by using birdshot and it was opponents of the president who bore the brunt of the injuries, he said.

Morsi is not expected to make concessions in his speech today and his pronouncement are unlikely to diffuse the crisis, Abdu said.

I don’t think anything he says will have that much relevance any more because now there is death and now there is blood, the situation has shifted. It is entirely different, it is not a political spat [any more].

The opposition insists that dialogue with the president is only possible if he revokes his new powers, but it may be too late for even that concession, Abdu argues.

The paradigm has shifted. Once there is death and blood everything changes. Opposition forces cannot now be seen to hold a dialogue with Morsi, because their supporters will say ‘no, our people died and so there is no talking’.

Expect massive protests on Friday and for the death toll to rise, Abdu said.

The resignation of several of Morsi’s advisers highlights how isolated the president and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters have become, he added.

But the deployment of tanks outside the presidential palace raises questions about whether the army has become involved in the political standoff, Abdu said.

I would surmise that is in the interest of the army to defend Morsi because the constitution that he is trying to pass through, cements their privileges that keeps them a state within a state.
I think they have learnt their lesson not to intervene too overtly in politics again. But their interests lie with the draft constitution........"