The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From AP:

CAIRO — Faced with an unprecedented strike by the courts and massive opposition protests, Egypt’s Islamist president is not backing down in the showdown over decrees granting him near-absolute powers.

Activists warn that his actions threaten a “second revolution,” but Mohammed Morsi faces a different situation than his ousted predecessor, Hosni Mubarak: He was democratically elected and enjoys the support of the nation’s most powerful political movement.

Already, Morsi is rushing the work of an Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly at the heart of the power struggle, with a draft of the charter expected as early as Thursday, despite a walkout by liberal and Christian members that has raised questions about the panel’s legitimacy.

The next step would be for Morsi to call a nationwide referendum on the document. If adopted, parliamentary elections would be held by the spring.

Wednesday brought a last-minute scramble to seize the momentum over Egypt’s political transition. Morsi’s camp announced that his Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists will stage a massive rally in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the plaza where more than 200,000 opposition supporters gathered a day earlier.

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Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi has brokered a deal

The Daily Banter Headline Grab (from Reuters):

Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt on the eighth day of intensive Israeli fire on the Gaza Strip and militant rocket attacks out of the enclave, Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said.

First word of the truce came from a Palestinian official who has knowledge of the negotiations in Cairo, where U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also pursuing peace efforts.

Asked whether a ceasefire deal had been reached, an Egyptian official in Cairo said: “Yes, and Egypt will announce it.”

Egyptian state TV had earlier said a news conference would be broadcast from President Mohamed Mursi’s palace shortly.

Israeli sources said Israel had agreed to a truce, but would not lift its blockade of the Palestinian territory, which is run by the Islamist Hamas movement.

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Gaza: Close to breaking point

By Ben Cohen

“The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years,” – Eli Yishai, Israel’s Interior Minister

The continued Israeli assault on the Gaza strip that now counts 96 Palestinians dead, 50 of them civilians, is being backed explicitly by President Obama who told reporters at a press gathering in Thailand:

“Let’s understand what the precipitating event here that’s causing the current crisis and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles that were landing not just in Israeli territory but in areas that are populated, and there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman made the following statement to the press on the official US line:

We strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, and we regret the death and injury of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians caused by the ensuing violence. There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately in order to allow the situation to de-escalate.

So much for a balanced approach.

The US retelling of the conflict really is astonishing if you look at what actually happened, and given only 3 Israelis have died during the latest episode of violence, it borders on the grotesque. Obama’s argument that Israel has the right to attack Gaza because ‘no country would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens’ is patently absurd when you look at what Gazans deal with on a daily basis. The minute land strip that houses roughly 1.7 million, most of them refugees, is a virtual prison suppressed by continuous economic and military blockades, routine incursions and attacks from its Israeli neighbors. It cedes control of its borders, sea and airspace to Israel, and is almost completely reliant on foreign aid to exist. Would any other country on earth tolerate that? Would the US allow Canada or Mexico to do the same to them without retaliation or resistance?

Of course they wouldn’t. But because Palestinians are dark skinned Arabs, apparently they must.

It is important for people to understand that while politicians and the media paint Arabs as uncivilized barbarians incapable of human feeling and committed to frenzied Jihad, Arabs do not of course view themselves this way. Arabs are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who feel emotion, pain and love the same way everybody else does. They love their countries and have pride in autonomy and self reliance the same way Americans do and want peace and prosperity for their children the same way Israelis do.

It’s easy to pretend that Palestinians don’t feel loss of life like Israelis. It makes the incredibly disproportionate violence unleashed upon them that we see on live television a more palatable process. It’s ok, because Arabs don’t respect human life, so killing more of them is fine. And given Arabs only understand force, the only way to deal with them is through force. If they are continually subjected to humiliation and violence, they will cease wanting the same things Israelies do. Or so goes the logic.

The problem with this narrative is that the Palestinians will not comply with it. They are resisting the slow colonization of their land by any means necessary, and they are paying a huge price in human lives.

The US could put a halt to the occupation quite easily. It bankrolls the Israeli military to the tune of $3.1 billion a year, and could threaten to cut funding as long as it illegally occupies Palestinian land.

But it won’t, and it is highly unlikely Obama will deviate from what is now fairly entrenched US policy towards the conflict.

What Obama can do, however, is to use Egypt to prevent the violence from escalating. With its new government, Egypt is now a far more important player in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis as it will not cede as easily to US demands as was the case under Hosni Mubarak. Egypt’s new President, Mohamed Mursi has openly supported the Palestinians and condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza, giving him far more credence in the Arab world than Mubarak did, who did little to stop Israel’s continual attacks on Gaza in the past. Since coming to power though, Mursi has made efforts to keep good relations with Israel, understanding the impact of jeopardizing important trading relations. Israel does not want to put those relationships at risk either, and will listen to Egypt if it intervenes in its action in Gaza.

According to Reuters, the Egyptian government believes a truce between the two sides is imminent, having spent days pressing both sides to pull back. While publicly backing Israel, President Obama is clearly aware that another war on Gaza is not good for US interests in the region and has been urging Egypt (and Turkey) to negotiate a truce.

It isn’t much to get excited about – given the leverage the US has over Israel, the conflict needn’t have occurred in the first place – but putting a stop to the violence is an absolute necessity. Because Gaza is close to breaking point and can’t take much more.

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By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett: We begin by noting our sadness over the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the others who were killed at the consulate in Benghazi. Hillary knew and worked with Chris Stevens during her service in the State Department; he was very highly regarded, professionally and personally, among his colleagues.

In the United States, much of the early discussion about the attack in Benghazi has focused on a question that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself laid out: “How can this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?”

In fact, it is not so hard to understand how “this” — along with the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, subsequent protests at U.S. diplomatic facilities in Sanaa, Khartoum and across the region, and myriad other manifestations of resentment against the United States in much of the Arab and Muslim worlds — could happen.

But most Americans don’t really want to understand it. For, as Hillary underscored on “The Ed Show” on MSNBC, “the critical issue here is the deep-seated resentment that people have for U.S. policy throughout the region. … Hatred and resentment for U.S. policy are the heart of the problem here. Communities throughout the Middle East are angry.”

This reality is now crashing in on U.S. ambitions in the Middle East every day. Yet, as Hillary noted, Americans “have not even begun to grapple with the enormity of the challenge we face as countries become more politically participatory, and people have a voice.”

Over the past few days, we’ve heard more than a few politicians and commentators recommend cutting off aid, or demand that Egyptian President Morsi adopt a tougher rhetorical stance against “extremist” discourse in his own Muslim Brotherhood if he wants a coveted meeting with President Barack Obama.

Against this, Hillary countered that “it a fantasy to think that [the United States] has cards to play,” with which it can leverage key local actors. “The President of Egypt, before he comes to the United States, his first trips were to China and Iran. … The train has left the station in these countries, and unless [Washington] figures out how to adapt, [its] strategic position in the Middle East and, therefore, globally will continue to erode.”

So far, though, the United States is clearly not adapting. Why are Americans so reluctant to grapple with Middle Eastern reality? Hillary addressed this critical question on Al Jazeera:

“There’s a really fundamental flaw in U.S. strategic policy … and it has to do with empire. We look at each country, at each place, and we see the expatriates that we want to see in the cafés in Paris, who parrot our line about secular liberalism, and we arm, fund, and train them to go back and, in effect, impose a political order on those societies that have very different histories, characters, cares, and concerns. … Those expatriates we listen to repeatedly — in Iraq, Iran, Libya, everywhere — we listen to them not because we’re stupid but because we have a very determined focus for dominance.”

Especially in a political season, American elites do not seem at all inclined toward soul-searching about their country’s foreign policy after the events of the past few days. Much has been made of Mitt Romney’s “shoot first, aim later” (to use President Obama’s phrase) comments on events in Libya and Egypt. But Hillary pointed out on Al Jazeera that other prominent Republicans — for example, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa — have gone even further than Governor Romney, arguing that President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world during his first year in office, most notably through major addresses delivered in Istanbul and Cairo, was a “mistake” that showed “weakness.”

This is, Hillary noted, the “wrong critique.” For Obama hardly fulfilled the promise that some believed was embodied in his 2009 Istanbul and Cairo speeches — or his campaign pledge not just to end the Iraq war but also to end the “mindset” that had gotten the United States into that strategically and morally failed project. Rather the Obama administration “walked back completely” from those commitments.

The real critique — which Romney, of course, won’t put forward — is “why is the Obama administration really so dishonest in its policies, and how could people in the Middle East really take America’s word seriously as a constructive force.” Until Americans and the politicians can address that, they never will understand “what is the reason” for Middle Easterners’ anger.

Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the NSC expert on Iran and – from 2001 to 2003 – was one of only a few U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq. [This article was originally published at RaceforIran.com. For direct link, click here: http://www.raceforiran.com/protests-in-the-muslim-world-can-the-united-states-deal-effectively%e2%80%94and-honestly%e2%80%94with-politically-empowered-muslim-societies

(Originally published on ConsortiumNews.com)

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Lebanese Islamists on scooters, wave Syrian Opposition and Islamist flags to express solidarity with Syria's anti-government protesters and to protest against a film they consider blasphemous to Islam and insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, in Tripoli northern Lebanon September 16, 2012. REUTERS/Omar Ibrahim

The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From the Reuters:

DUBAI (Reuters) – Western embassies across the Muslim world remained on high alert on Sunday and the United States urged vigilance after days of anti-American violence provoked by a video mocking the Prophet Mohammad.

The head of Libya’s national assembly said an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans last Tuesday looked like a planned assault by a “group with an agenda” rather than a spontaneous reaction to the video posted online.

With protests against the film continuing from London to Lahore on Sunday, Western diplomatic missions were on edge. Germany followed the U.S. lead and withdrew some staff from its embassy in Sudan, which was stormed on Friday.

Washington ordered non-essential staff and family members to leave its embassy on Saturday after the Khartoum government turned down a U.S. request to send Marines to bolster security.

Non-essential U.S. personnel have also been withdrawn from Tunisia, and Washington urged U.S. citizens to leave the capital Tunis after the embassy there was targeted on Friday.

The protests peaked on Friday and abated over the weekend. Around 350 people chanted slogans at a rally outside the U.S. embassy in London on Sunday. A small group of protesters burned a U.S. flag outside the embassy in the Turkish capital, and in Pakistan there were protests in more than a dozen cities.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From the ABC OTUS News:

In our interview today, Mitt Romney did not back down from his belief that the Obama Administration’s first response to the Cairo protest demonstrated “sympathy” for the attackers, but he also made it clear that he was ready to move on.

“What I said was exactly the same conclusion the White House reached, which was that the statement was inappropriate. That’s why they backed away from it as well,” Romney told me.

The Cairo Embassy’s statement, released before it was attacked, said it rejects “the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

When I pointed out that the White House did not say the Embassy’s statement showed sympathy for the attackers, Romney stuck by his remarks.

“Well, I think the statement was an inappropriate statement. I think it was not directly applicable and appropriate for the setting. I think it should have been taken down. And apparently the White House felt the same way,” he said.

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Smile and smile and be a villain.

By Bob Cesca: This week, Vanity Fair published a beautifully written article about the president by Michael Lewis who happened to use the American involvement with the NATO military action in Libya as a through-line. It’s possibly the best insider piece on the president since a 2008 Newsweek series that pulled back the curtain on the president’s successful 2008 campaign.

In addition to covering the often harrowing, emotionally tumultuous and purely weird aspects of life in the White House, as well as the president’s insider tips on what’s required to be the leader of the free world (for example, Obama recommended daily exercise or the job with “break you down”), the article covered a meeting of the “principals” in the Situation Room as the administration was readying a plan to keep Qaddafi from committing wholesale genocide in Benghazi. There were two options for the president: 1) participate with Europe in a completely ineffectual no-fly zone (Qaddafi was only using ground forces in his march to Benghazi), or 2) do nothing. The president determined, with obvious reason, that both options were unacceptable in spite of recommendations from both Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton. History shows that a combination no-fly zone and air-strike operation was successfully engaged, culminating with the death of Qaddafi, a rapid end to the mission and free elections.

Regardless of the specifics, it’s clear that the president approaches foreign policy decisions with deadly seriousness and doesn’t kneejerk into tight spots. Furthermore, the president told Lewis that he absolutely dislikes the notion of “feigned outrage.” The president, Lewis reported, values disciplined authenticity over bluster — another trait that’s helpful when dealing with sensitive overseas events.

As I read the article on Monday, I had no idea what was about to occur both in Libya and in the context of the campaign for president.

We’re all aware of what happened and, in general, the sequence of events.

To review, it all began with a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo which attempted to preemptively mitigate the impact of an anti-Islamic no-budget American “movie” (it hardly qualifies as a movie) that was due to be released. The statement was critical of religious intolerance while defending the “universal right” to free speech. Nevertheless, unarmed protesters gathered outside the embassy and eventually climbed over the wall of the compound where they desecrated an American flag.

Meanwhile, a second attack, this time with rockets, was reported at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya — possibly by al-Qaeda, though there’s no official confirmation as of this writing — and Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith was killed.

Next, the Romney campaign issued a statement indicting the embassy and the president for “apologizing” for American values and “sympathizing” with the protesters in Cairo and the violent militants in Benghazi — even though the embassy statement was issued before both events. However, the statement was embargoed by Romney until midnight when the observance of a 9/11 political truce was due to end. But minutes later, at around 10:30 eastern, the Romney campaign lifted the embargo on its statement. It was still the 11th but Romney just had to stick his bulbous head into the political shit.

At that point, the Obama administration and Secretary Clinton issued a statement unequivocally condemning the attack in Libya.

“I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.”

Then, at midnight, an overzealous Reince Priebus jumped onto Twitter and wrote, “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.” Question: how does one “sympathize” with attackers before there are any attackers, especially when, 90 minutes earlier, the administration condemned the attack? The Romney campaign and the Republican Party chairman were constructing a huge lie. Again.

Several hours later, two more embassy officials and Ambassador Chris Stevens were killed.

At 10:30 eastern Wednesday morning, 12 hours after the Romney campaign’s initial statement went public, Romney held a press conference in which he continued to politicize the attacks while trying really damn hard to appear presidential. Throughout the event, Romney repeated his assertions from 12 hours earlier that the president “sympathized” with the killers of Ambassador Stevens as well as the protesters in Cairo and “apologized” for American values.

Once again, Romney lied.

He stepped away from the podium with a self-satisfied grin on his face.

There wasn’t a single moment when Romney behaved like a competent national leader. Instead of waiting until all of the facts had been revealed — hell, instead of correctly acknowledging the facts and timelines that were absolutely known at the time — Romney popped off and turned a tragic event into the yet another example of his predilection for inaccurate, awkward, pathetic, neophyte partisan hackery. Much like John McCain’s colossal bungling of the financial crisis in 2008, Romney failed to rise to the occasion in the context of a real-life crisis. He reminded the nation of exactly why he’s 10 points behind the president on national security and foreign policy — typically a no-brainer win for militant Republicans. On one hand there’s President Obama who’s repeatedly displayed whip smarts and cool tenacity in every overseas endeavor in which he’s engaged, and on the other hand there’s a Republican candidate who not only lied about the timeline of events to score political points but also opened his yap before he knew the shot.

What ensued throughout yesterday morning was a mad dash among foreign policy experts, pundits and writers on both sides to see who could be the first to use the word “dilettante” to describe the increasingly embattled Republican nominee for president.

Interesting, isn’t it, how Romney’s spastic behavior and unhinged “sympathize” meme came on the heels of being goaded by Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and others to get tough and to be more hard-lined conservative. As predicted, Romney did just that. For the rest of the day, AM talk radio joined in with the “sympathize” and “apologize” meme. And, also as predicted, I suspect voters will be utterly disgusted by all of this while coupling it with other examples of Romney’s ineptitude and ungainly lack of political restraint.

One of Romney’s many miscalculations — and a mistake that many hawkish Republicans make is to confuse obnoxious loudness with foreign policy expertise.

The opposite of a foreign policy neophyte isn’t a scolding jerkass who pops off with saber-rattling bromides and political agitprop. Romney could have been a statesman about the events in North Africa and appeared dignified — perhaps qualified — in the process, but instead he decided to be a braying crackpot. Anyone with a lapel pin and a pulse can do that. Leaning on the warhawk slogan switch doesn’t amount to anything resembling international leadership gravitas.

Put another way, Rush Limbaugh thought Romney looked “presidential” yesterday.

I rest my case.

Let there be no doubt: if Mitt Romney somehow wins this thing, the slightest provocation from Iran will trigger Romney’s herky-jerky response cortex and we’ll be at war in the Middle East again without a rational plan or an exit strategy. The AM radio talkers will be effectively puppeteering the Romney White House, just as they did with Romney during this week’s tragic events.

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By Chez Pazienza: If you’re one of those people who’s always dreamed of going back in time, I’ve got some terrific travel advice for you today: plan your next vacation to the Middle East; it’s still the second century over there in some areas, or at least 1979.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but yesterday it was reported that separate angry mobs had descended upon U.S. embassies in Libya and Egypt, burning one to the ground and killing an American diplomat stationed there and scaling the walls of the other and hoisting a black flag emblazoned with the Muslim declaration of faith in place of the American flag. The reason for the attacks is as familiar as it is infuriating: Apparently a real estate developer and would-be independent film producer here in the states has put together a movie for an Egyptian Christian, an anti-Muslim extremist — promoted in part by Koran-burning asshole Pastor Terry Jones of Florida — that denigrates the prophet Muhammad. And we all know how calmly and rationally many Muslims, particularly in Middle Eastern countries, have traditionally responded to their prophet being depicted in any fashion, let alone an insulting one.

But that was really just the beginning of the bloodshed over a perceived religious slight, because last night, as you no doubt know by now, it was confirmed that the American ambassador to Libya and at least two others were killed in a rocket attack — a criminal act that President Obama is calling “outrageous” and the first time a U.S. ambassador has been murdered since the glory days of Middle Eastern political turmoil back in the 70s.

And again, all over decades and centuries of religious resentment and sparked by somebody saying something mean about a guy who lived around 1,900 years ago. It’s insanity — indefensible insanity — pure and simple. And if we weren’t inexplicably forced to take Islam seriously and defer to it and its followers, our outrage wouldn’t have to be tempered with delicately worded admissions that intolerance and a lack of understanding may have played a role in this madness.

Now before the PC police come banging on my door, know that I’m not going all “Islam Is Evil” here. It’s crazy and misguided, mind you, and its fundamentalist adherents are especially dangerous — argue with that and you’re simply trying to deny reality or keep your liberal moral relativist card from being pulled — but it’s no more evil than any other faith-based religion. It just happens to be the biggest threat to the civilized world at the moment when it’s practiced by those who have perfect faith.

The Middle East/Northern Africa is one of the most bustling and thriving regions of the world — and it also happens to be one of the most culturally stunted, thanks in large part to a nearly absolute devotion to ancient superstition that’s been allowed to dictate, typically with a governmental mandate, every facet of the lives of those who live there. In many Middle Eastern countries, Islam is a meal that’s force-fed — and it’s a fact that’s held an otherwise vibrant point on the globe stuck in time while putting those outside its purview in the unenviable position of having to walk on eggshells and gush ridiculous platitudes in an effort to make sure the often barbaric beliefs that rule the lives of its people are never shown anything less than the utmost respect. Because if they aren’t, well, you get what we’re witnessing right now in Libya.

But to claim that Islam is a faith that’s somehow more insane than all the others is almost laughably absurd. It’s one thing to approach a civil criticism of devout Muslims from the understanding that all faith-based religions are equally dubious, but it’s quite another to say, as fundamentalist Christians here in the United States often do, that one unproven and unprovable belief system is superior to another. It’s certainly true that, these days at least, Christians often don’t, en masse, rise up and execute infidels in the street if they feel that somebody has insulted Jesus, but it hasn’t always been that way; the difference between modern-day Christians living abroad and modern-day Muslims living in concentrated areas like the Middle East is that Christians have, for the most part, been forced to bend to changing times, to adapt to a civilization that no longer allows them to behave like primitives in thrall to myth and magic and to react violently when challenged.

Yes, there are still plenty of heinous acts committed in the name of Jesus and plenty of backward-ass thinking deferred to and permitted to influence the lives of believers and non-believers alike, here in the U.S. especially. But despite the designs of what some have cleverly and ironically referred to as the “American Taliban,” the Bible-thumping would-be theocrats who believe the United States is the Christian god’s administration on this planet, in large part the Middle East doesn’t have a vital and assertive secular society to intrude upon its reliance on the spiritual, fanciful and antiquated.

So this is what you get: living, breathing men and women killed in 2012 because the Koran says they have to die for the crime of apostasy, for insulting the great prophet of Islam. Thousands of men and women dead in a suicidal plot involving commercial jets and some of our most iconic buildings in the year 2001 all because of religious resentment, manifesting itself in a frustrated culture, and the lunatic belief that Muslims are being subjugated by our presence on holy land. And then, on the flip side of the same coin, equally devoted Christians claiming that their invisible god can beat up the invisible god of Islam. If there weren’t sanity in numbers — if we didn’t, for reasons I’ll never understand, simply accept that an utterly irrational belief should be respected simply because enough people believe it — we would call it what it is: insanity. Absolute insanity. Just another case of the implementation of an unwavering faith in magic and superstition, handed down from a time when people literally knew nothing about anything, doing far more harm than good.

At some point it has to stop. But I can’t imagine that point will come anytime soon. And that means the bodies will continue to pile up, chaos will reign and the madness at its core will continue to be treated with unnecessary reverence.

Update: The U.S. government is now saying that it suspects the Libyan attack was planned in advance and may have used the anti-movie protest as a diversion.

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Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Mursi calls for national unity following his victory in Egypt's presidential elections

From the BBC:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi has called for national unity following his victory in Egypt’s presidential elections. Mr Mursi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, said he would be president for all Egyptians. He won 51.73% of the vote in last-week’s run-off, beating former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. World leaders have congratulated Mr Mursi. The White House urged Egypt to be “a pillar of regional peace”.

Days of tension led up to the declaration of the result after Egypt’s ruling military council gave itself sweeping powers.

When the winner was announced, tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters holding a vigil in Cairo’s Tahrir Square erupted in jubilation.

“Down with military rule” they chanted amid wild cheering and explosions of fireworks.

Celebrations continued long into the night, with many of Mr Mursi’s supporters still in Tahrir Square on Monday morning. In a televised address, Mr Mursi paid tribute to the protesters killed in last year’s uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak. He said without the “blood of the martyrs” he would not have been elected. “The revolution goes on, carries on until all the objectives of the revolution are achieved and together we will complete this march. The people have been patient long enough,” he said.

“I call on you, great people of Egypt… to strengthen our national unity. Today I am a president for all Egyptians, wherever they may be.”

Mr Mursi also praised the role of the country’s powerful armed forces.

After the result, Mr Mursi resigned from his positions within the Muslim Brotherhood – including his role as chairman of its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) – as he had pledged to do in the event of his victory. Mr Mursi has promised that his leadership will be inclusive, and has courted secular and Christian voters. Egypt’s military ruler, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, was among the first to congratulate Mr Mursi.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague also congratulated Mr Mursi, saying the election marked “an historic moment for Egypt”.

The White House called the election “a milestone for Egypt’s transition to democracy”.

“We believe it is essential for the Egyptian government to continue to fulfil Egypt’s role as a pillar of regional peace, security and stability,” spokesman Jay Carney said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the long-standing peace treaty between the two countries would continue.

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