For all the (misplaced) talk of mass Islamist violence and civil war over the past three weeks, it is the military junta (or military-security complex, or ‘deep state’, or government, if you will) that will be tempted more and more to use the tried and tested street violence of the Mubarak era – thuggery – to break up Brotherhood protests. The longer the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters camp out on the streets of the capital and elsewhere, the more the military may feel pressured to stop them. This is a game of nerves.

Forget Algeria, forget Syria. The Islamists are not going to be sucked into a pointless scenario of violence in which they will only lose sooner or later, at the same time as squandering what sympathy they have in some quarters around the world. Far better for them to stick to ‘silmiyya‘ and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, in the best tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood going for the sympathy vote, than risk their future. The question is more what the authorities are going to do about it.

So far they are playing the game of ignoring them. Junta chief Abdulfattah al-Sisi has appointed an interim president who has negotiated a new government team with the political parties prepared to play ball with the Mursi’s ouster. They have secured $12  billion in aid from Gulf countries – and you have to wonder if guarantees of that money were a prerequisite for removing him – and hope to now renegotiate the IMF loans that Mursi’s government was unable to bag. So far the United States and European Union are on side. What to worry about? In theory, the Islamists could camp out in Nasr City ’til kingdom come, post-MB Egypt’s leaders will continue regardless.

But they could crack. Brotherhood media have been more or less shut down in Egypt by the military, so it’s interesting to note the tack on Al Jazeera – playing up the idea of Sisi seeking official posts and divisions among senior military commanders, covering rejectionists like Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan who, the channel reported, refused to take a phone call from new vice-president Mohammed ElBaradei, and giving airtime to the protests and Brotherhood leaders at large like Mohammed al-Beltagi. The army has already killed 55 people among Islamist protesters near the presidential palace and now thugs appear to have been behind the deaths of three women in Mansoura on Friday night.

I suspect that just like Mubarak during the January 25 uprising, the military ruler today will want to break up the protests by any means possible for fear that the longer it goes on, the more the legitimacy of the July 3 move crumbles. In the post-uprising environment there cannot be any camel charges or the like, that’s for sure, but there is space for small-scale provocations and thuggery to encourage people to go home – while holding Mursi and his team hostage to help secure a final deal that ensures the survival of the new order. This is not to exonerate those among the Islamists who have lifted the first finger or responded with a knife or a bullet or a toilet seat thrown from a rooftop – but Sisi will want these demonstrations to stop and utilize whatever means available to do it.