Ahead of the mass protests across Egypt Sunday, Egypt’s military reportedly moved to shut down the tunnels, fearing Gaza-based militants would exploit any potential chaos to stage attacks on Egyptian security forces. Egyptians, panicked that the demonstrations would cause a sudden collapse of the state, stocked up on provisions and on fuel, causing long lines at gas stations across the country.

Now that Egypt’s military issued Monday a 48-hour ultimatum for President Mohamed Morsi and other political forces to resolve the current political crisis, which saw millions take to the streets in protest Sunday, Gazans are even more worried that their economic situation will worsen.

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From the New York Times:

Mr. Pochter, who was to enter his junior year at Kenyon in the fall, worked as an intern at Amideast, a nonprofit organization “engaged in international education, training and development activities in the Middle East and North Africa,” according to the group’s Web site. A statement issued by Mr. Pochter’s family said that he had planned to return to the Middle East for his spring semester abroad.

“Our beloved 21-year-old son and brother Andrew Driscoll Pochter went to Alexandria for the summer, to teach English to 7- and 8-year-old Egyptian children and to improve his Arabic,” the statement said. “He was looking forward to returning to Kenyon College for his junior year and to spending his spring semester in Jordan.”

"He went to Egypt because he cared profoundly about the Middle East, and he planned to live and work there in the pursuit of peace and understanding,” the family said.

Following the violence, the American State Department issued a warning for Americans "to defer nonessential travel to Egypt at this time due to the continuing possibility of political and social unrest.”

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From the Guardian:

"It is the latest in a series of arrests of opposition activists, lawyers and politicians this week – and according to Egypt's foremost human rights campaigner, it heralds the most serious affront to free speech since associates of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood assumed power last year. 'This is the crackdown,' said Heba Morayef, director of Human Rights Watch in Egypt.

Youssef rose to prominence after the country's 2011 uprising. His show has more than 30 million viewers across the Middle East and he has been sued several times by private individuals. But this is the first time that the prosecutor general, Talaat Abdallah, has followed up one of the complaints with legal action – a symbolic gesture that suggests President Mohamed Morsi's Islamist-led regime is now prepared to take a more authoritarian stance against its critics."

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The news broke when an anonymous source told Reuters the army would "behave like a police force." The wire service said that means "detainees would go to a civilian and not military court."

The news follows Morsi's state of emergency and curfew declaration in three Egyptian cities — Suez, Ismailia and Port Said. It's unclear if the army will operate in the three cities under emergency law or all of Egypt.

The army's restoration as an internal policing force is likely to spark significant controversy.

GlobalPost's senior correspondent in Egypt, Erin Cunningham, reports:

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The White House on Tuesday condemned Morsi's description of Israelis as "bloodsuckers, war mongers, and descendants of pigs and apes."

He made the remarks came during Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza that began in December 2009.

Morsi said on Wednesday that the comments had been taken out of context.

"The president stressed they were taken from comments on the Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and stressed the need to put the remarks in the right context," he said in a statement issued after he met with US Senator John McCain.

In other footage aired on Friday in Egypt, Morsi declares his support for Hamas and goes on to say “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews," The New York Times reported.

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At once, he is both Egypt’s first-ever democratically elected leader and a divisive figure with unprecedented powers. He swiftly ended, in one simple stroke in August, six decades of military rule. And he has since plunged the country into its deepest political crisis in years.

As an energetic, street-led opposition forms against Morsi’s recent moves — including a decree that granted him wide authority and the hurried passage of a controversial draft constitution — the former Muslim Brotherhood leader has lurched through the crisis with a series of mercurial and sometimes contradictory statements that have done little to temper the unrest.

His erratic leadership style, heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, is now in the spotlight as the future of Egypt hangs in the balance.

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The constitution's critics however may contest the outcome. A spokesman for the main opposition group which has been campaigning for a "no" vote said there were "a lot" of irregularities in the voting.

The Brotherhood's unofficial results come a day before the election commission is expected to announce the final official tally for voting organized over two weeks. The group has accurately tallied the outcome of past elections.

The passage of the constitution would be a victory for Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. The Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political arm, said in a statement that it hoped the passage is a "historic opportunity" to heal Egypt's divisions and launch a dialogue to restore stability and build state institutions.

But the comparatively low turnout of 32 percent of eligible voters, as well as allegations by the opposition of voting violations, threatened to undermine the constitution's legitimacy and keep Egypt polarized.

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She was a supporter of Egypt’s ousted dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and opposed the 2011 revolution.

But all that changed Tuesday night, when she joined tens of thousands of Egyptians outside the presidential palace to protest Mohamed Morsi’s new, wide-ranging powers.

Ebeid, who works for Nokia, stayed for the demonstration Wednesday night too. That protest turned violent. Clashes erupted between those for and against Morsi, leaving at least six people dead and 650 injured.

It was Egypt’s fiercest street battle since Morsi assumed office in June. On Thursday, Morsi sent in tanks to disperse the crowd.

“I never went down to Tahrir to protest with the revolutionaries because I’ve always been felool,” Ebeid said, using an Arabic word that has evolved into a derogatory term meaning “remnants” or supporters of the Mubarak regime. “But right now we have the same goal. I want Morsi out.”

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At one of the largest protests yet against Morsi’s five-month rule, demonstrators in the iconic plaza waved anti-Brotherhood signs and chanted against the leader, who they say is taking the country back toward dictatorship. Morsi made a presidential decree on Nov. 22 that gave him broad powers immune from judicial review.

In the same breath, anti-Morsi protesters also voiced opposition to the Brotherhood-dominated constitutional committee that last night rammed through a draft constitution that lacked the support of Egypt’s Coptic Church and many secular representatives.

In a marathon session that ended in the early hours of Friday morning, the members of the Morsi-allied constituent assembly voted in a new constitution that the New York-based Human Rights Watch says offers only mixed support of key social and political rights.

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Since neither choice appeals to a majority of Egyptians, they have instead turned out in large numbers to protest.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi says he needs the new, sweeping powers to protect Egypt from an activist judiciary dominated by holdovers from the era of toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi said he would give up these new powers as soon as a new constitution is drafted. So after protests erupted, the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly resolved to diffuse the situation by ramming through an already controversial draft constitution.

“It’s not even an ultimatum, really. You get a constitution that’s quite crappy, and you’re stuck with a president whose decisions you cannot challenge,” said Ziad Akl, a senior political researcher at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “This has nothing to do with a transition toward democracy, but a lot to do with creating a new autocratic or dictatorial elite.”

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There were reports of clashes between riot police and demonstrators, according to CNN, with the police firing tear gas and charging at protesters who threw stones. CNN said the police arrested many demonstrators, beating some.

The protesters, nearly 200,000 of them, filled Tahrir Square from Tuesday night into Wednesday. Observers said the crowds were the biggest since former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power last year.

Reuters reported that two of Egypt's top courts also stopped work in protest of the decree.

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The decree, issued Thursday night, was met with outrage by Egypt's political opposition, which called Morsi's move an "attack on democracy" and a "threat to judicial independence." It also led to demonstrations of tens of thousands on Friday in Cairo and other Egyptian cities.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said late on Monday that Morsi's decree would not be subject to modification and that it may have been "misunderstood" by the public, reported Ahram Online.

"The decree will only immunize the president's sovereign decisions [from legal challenges]," Ali said in a statement after Morsi met with senior jurists, reported UPI. He also said the decree was temporary and stressed Morsi's respect for Egypt's judicial institutions and their independence.

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Justice Minister Ahmed Mekky was mediating negotiations between Morsi and members of the Supreme Judicial Council, BBC News reported.

One possible way out of the crisis would be for a memorandum or amendment defining the decree's limits, although several prominent opposition leaders have said they will not engage with Morsi until the decree is rescinded.

Meanwhile, stocks in Egypt continued to tumble Monday.

According to Reuters, the stock market is down 7 percent, with the country's main index down 3.9 percent right after it opened.

More than 500 people have been injured in protests since Morsi issued the decree on Thursday, which shields his decisions from becoming subject to judicial review.

From Cairo, GlobalPost's Erin Cunningham reported that Egyptians are concerned about the direction protests may take.

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In an effort to quell the criticism, the BBC reports that Morsi released a statement that, "Reiterates the temporary nature of those measures, which are not intended to concentrate power, but to avoid ... attempts to undermine democratically elected bodies and preserve the impartiality of the judiciary. "

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The escalating violence in Gaza and southern Israel, in which 15 Palestinians and three Israelis have so far been killed, presents an early diplomatic and political test for Egypt’s new president and former Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi is under international pressure to safeguard Egypt’s decades-long peace treaty with Israel. But he is also facing calls at home, and even from within his own party, to take a harsher stance on Israel in light of the ongoing strikes.

“If Morsi does not align with Hamas we will remove him,” said Abdullah Al Desouqi, a member of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in South Sinai. Hamas is the Islamist movement now in control of the Gaza Strip.

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All politics aside, it is true that Egypt is no longer the unflinching ally it once was.

Shaken by a popular uprising that ousted U.S.-friendly dictator Hosni Mubarak and brought Islamists to power, the decades-long partnership between the two countries is significantly different from when U.S. President Barack Obama took office.

This new relationship was on display last month when the government of President Mohamed Morsi was slow to respond to an assault on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. The ordeal prompted Obama to publicly question America’s alliance with Egypt.

“You know, I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy,” Obama said at the time.

For its part, Egypt’s new leadership has made no secret of its desire to reset relations with the United States.

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It was Salafi-Islamist groups, more conservative than, and politically at odds with, the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, which made the first calls for protests outside the US Embassy in Cairo last week.

Since then, some of those same groups have openly pressured Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a longtime leader of the Brotherhood, to take a more hardline stance against the United States for “allowing” the anti-Islam film — which was used as a rallying point for the unrest — to be produced on its soil.

Morsi’s initial reluctance to condemn the storming at the US Embassy, which provoked the ire of the Obama administration, was largely viewed as a move to appease local, more extreme Islamic political groups.

Protesters outside the mission had chanted: “Morsi, Morsi, why are you silent? Isn’t this your prophet?”

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