Is Egypt slipping into a state of total confrontation characterized by increasing violence, demonization of the adversary and political escalation, putting conditions and counter-conditions for the return to normalcy? The dynamics of such escalation are reinforced by the lack of a minimal, even indirect, dialogue, because of the absence of a third party to facilitate. Egypt needs such a party, one that commands wide respect and the legitimacy to build bridges between the emerging caretaker regime and the ousted one of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Is Egypt taking the road of the 1954 confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the newly established military regime, or is it taking the more dangerous road of Algeria of the 1990s?

The question is how to break out of the zero-sum game that invites more bloodshed and escalation and pushes toward one of the above scenarios — in other words, interrupt the legitimacy war between the ballots and the popular petition. The former represents the newly born democratic regime, largely subdued and shaped by the Muslim Brotherhood's partisan goals in the name of a thin majority, trampling the basic rights of all minorities. The latter represents the increasing and widening resentment and Tamarod movement against the Islamists. Such ill performance was basically seen in the socioeconomic fields and in the exclusion of the others from the process of building a genuinely democratic regime.

Certain guidelines are necessary to break the vicious cycle of incompatible goals. They should be dealt with as a package, even if they are applied in a sequential way for practical reasons.