The recent events in the country have benefitted me at a personal level. I saw the real face of many friends and discovered who was a true friend and who was not. On the other hand, the events have adversely affected my work as people stopped buying the medicines I sell.

The recent events in the country have benefitted me at a personal level. I saw the real face of many friends and discovered who was a true friend and who was not. On the other hand, the events have adversely affected my work as people stopped buying the medicines I sell.

Despite the fuss, I believe that political action has stopped in Egypt for a while now. Both the civil and the Islamic movements have failed to achieve concrete political results. The civil movement is incapable of field work or uniting behind one goal, while the Islamic one is exclusionist and has terrorist tendencies, traits that became clearly evident soon after it came to power more than a year ago.

It is unrealistic to expect the dispersion of a sit-in of this size without casualties or using force. The Islamists kept turning down the option of peaceful negotiations for two months and the country could no longer afford an armed sit-in. Egypt is not the first country to break a sit-in by force; many countries resorted to such measures when they felt that the sit-ins were a threat to peace. The UK Prime Minister David Cameron famously said: “When it is related to national security, do not talk to me about human rights.”

I expect the strikes will continue for a while. The people and the army will not, however, back down on the measures taken after the June 30 Revolution. If the West does not stop supporting the terrorist Brotherhood, Egypt might have to join the Eastern camp represented by Russia, China and India.

I expect the current government to function more professionally. The Egyptian Revolution has specific demands: adoption of the minimum and maximum wage law; restoration of national funds in offshore accounts; fighting corruption; the adoption of a complete social justice system; and prosecution of the criminals and the corrupt. This is the only way the government can be respected by its people.