Commentators look at the momentous events in Cairo.

The Arab press is in no doubt that the uprising has been re-energised.

"Huge Protests Hasten Fall of Egyptian Regime," is the headline in Al Quds Al Arabi, reporting Tuesday's turn-out in Tahrir Square.

"Egyptian Revolution Shakes Pillars of Mubarak's Rule," says Al-Arab al-Alamiyah.

The Jordan Times says it all with a picture of a lone soldier standing on his tank, marooned in a great sea of demonstrators. The protesters had been galvanised by a speech in the square by the young activist, Wael Ghonim who was released from detention just a day earlier. Afterwards he tweeted the message, "Dear Egyptians, Failure is not an option."

The spirit of Tahrir is captured in the words of a 50-year-old engineer called Hosam Khalaf, who'd brought his wife and daughters along. Talking to New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman Mr Khalaf referred to the Tunisian revolution:

"We got a message from Tunis... and the message was; 'burn the fear that is inside you. That is what is happening here. This was a society in fear, and the fear has been burned. When we meet God, we will at least be able to say: 'We tried to do something.'"

Thomas Friedman concludes in the New York Times that in 40 years of writing about the Middle East, he has never seen anything like what is happening in Tahrir Square:

"In a region where the truth and truth-tellers have so long been smothered under the crushing weight of oil, autocracy and religious obscurantism, suddenly the Arab world has a truly free space - and the truth is now gushing out like a torrent. I know the 'realist' experts believe this will all be shut down soon. Maybe it will. But for one brief shining moment, forget the experts and just listen. You have not heard this before. It is the sound of a people so long kept voiceless, finally finding, and celebrating their own voices."

Robert Fisk of the London-based Independent says it took him hours to wade into what was the biggest demonstration so far:

"Many said they had come because they were frightened; because they feared the world was losing interest in their struggle, because Mubarak had not yet left his palace, because the crowds had grown smaller in recent days, because some of the camera crews had left for other tragedies and other dictatorships, because the smell of betrayal was in the air... But yesterday proved that the revolution is alive."

President Mubarak's determination to have a long goodbye by staying on until elections in September incenses an Egyptian called Hassan Elsawaf quoted on a blog hosted by the US-based Council on Foreign Relation:

"It is painfully obvious that the 'deferred departure' scenario is no more than a ploy to stay on. It is bizarre to talk of the need to worry about a 'dignified exit' for Mubarak at the expense of the dignity of eighty five million suffering Egyptians. The people of Egypt have spoken."

And Mr Elsawaf has a message for the outside world:

"Some foreign western governments have made shockingly derogatory statements inferring that Egypt needs time to move towards democracy. Their hesitation to offer unequivocal demands for Mubarak to go only gives traction to his determination to hang on."

And a New York Times editorial agrees that the West is playing its hand very poorly:

"The United States and the European Union may not have been able to wheedle or push President Hosni Mubarak from power. Still, they badly miscalculated when they endorsed Egypt's vice president, Omar Suleiman, to lead the transition to democracy. He appears far more interested in maintaining as much of the old repressive order as he can get away with. That is unacceptable to Egypt's people, and it should be unacceptable to Egypt's Western supporters."

A critic of political Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali says in the Huffington Post that the Obama administration should help Egypt's secular democratic groups to organise themselves so they can challenge the Muslim Brotherhood in a post-Mubarak struggle for power at the ballot box:

"[The Democrats] must waste no time in persuading the Egyptian electorate why a Sharia-based government would be bad for them. Unlike the Iranians in 1979, the Egyptians have before them the example of a people who opted for Sharia -- the Iranians of 1979 -- and who have lived to regret it."

Ms Ali's thoughts get a deluge of responses from her readers. One unnamed commenter disapproves:

"You know what would be great? Letting a country decide for itself what it's going to do, without outside sources trying to pressure them in to whatever direction they feel more comfortable with."

On Algeria-based blog Algerie Focus Michael Chossudovsky attacks what he sees as America meddling in Egypt:

"Dictators are invariably political puppets. President Hosni Mubarak was a faithful servant of Western economic interests."

He says the US is intent on hijacking the revolution:

"From Washington's standpoint, regime replacement no longer requires the installation of an authoritarian military regime as in the heyday of US imperialism. It can be implemented by co-opting political parties, including the Left, civil society groups, infiltrating the protest movement and manipulating elections."

But there's very much more to Egypt's extraordinary story than just what's going on in and around Tahrir Square. And some of the papers step back and explore the wider mood. The Arab News carries a report from Linda Heard in her adopted city of Alexandria where she talks of recent, crazy days of lawlessness:

"I still feel like pinching myself when I watch my husband pick up his weapon - his late mother's walking stick - to join the vigilantes, who are protecting our neighbourhood against marauding thugs and recently-escaped prisoners who are often armed with guns stolen from torched police stations. Each night our guys sit around a fire, smoke cigarettes and drink sweet tea until someone yells 'Thieves!' - when they grab their knives, homemade swords and petrol bombs and run in search of infiltrators."

On the edge of Cairo, at Giza, in the shadow of the Pyramids, the Toronto Star tracks down several of the men who rode horses and camels into Tahrir Square in the mad charge by pro-Mubarak supporters at the height of last week's violence. Some say they were offered money to launch the attack, but others deny this - saying that they chose to protest. They're tired of the instability that's wrecked their livelihood.

"Everybody is waiting for the tourists," says one man. "Where are the dollars? Where are the euros? What are we all going to live on, the dung of the horses!"

But that's certainly not on the menu across the Nile at the Katameya Heights golf club, described as a gated citadel of Cairo luxury.

Reporter Jack Shenker looks around the place in a report published on the Pakistani newspaper Dawn:

"There is just one tactful nod to the turmoil that has shaken Egypt to its foundations in the past fortnight: a short letter to members, pinned to a noticeboard by the fountain. 'Welcome back - we hope you and your families are all safe,' it reads. 'The 18-hole operating hours are as follows...'"

Shenker goes on to reflect on how little has changed:

"Barack Obama claims this country 'is not going back to what it was', but in New Cairo - a satellite city to the east of the capital, home to dozens of high-walled residential compounds - life, on the surface at least, seems to have barely changed at all."

Also much the same as ever is the Egyptian sense of humour - and it's on display back in Tahrir Square. As you might imagine, the jokes are aimed at getting President Mubarak to pack his bags. A young girl was seen wearing a badge urging him to do it quickly. "Make it short," the badge said. "This is history, and we'll have to memorise it all at school!" And in the land of the Pyramids, I guess there's already way too much history for kids to learn.

We start at the very core of the Egyptian revolt. Gulf-based Khaleej Times's front page carries a photograph of a huge heart marked out on Tahrir Square. In it are written the words "Welcome to Freedom". Beside it the paper has another picture - one of an incredibly strained, anxious-looking President Hosni Mubarak. It's the face of a man whose world really has been turned upside down.

 

Some protesters slept in the tracks of the army's armoured vehicles to prevent them being used to force the protest into a smaller space says a Reuters report reprinted in the Khaleej Times.

Across the media there's a fascination with what the rebels there are doing. What's happening in the middle of Cairo is saluted by the New York Times' columnist Roger Cohen:

"Its spontaneous development into a tolerant mini-republic is a riposte to President Hosni Mubarak's warnings of chaos."

And Cohen is contemptuous of Mr Mubarak's talk of sweeping reform:

"It's a preposterous idea, really, to imagine that this anti-democrat Mubarak, aided by his long time henchman Omar Suleiman, can now at 82 reverse his every instinct and deliver, within seven months, a free and fair election."

Commenting on Cohen's article, a reader, who describes himself as a being of Arab origin, expresses thanks:

"Thank you for ripping the veil off of the vision in the West that somehow, the Arabs, are different and could never fight for their human rights in such a non-violent fashion."

Every detail of life in the extraordinary bubble that is Tahrir Square is laid out on the Global Voices website by a blogger called Eman Abdel Rahmann and he doesn't hold back:

"Life here has its own rhythm now and the spirit on display is of a mini Utopia."

He posts pictures of the activists praying, eating dates and drinking endless cups of tea.

The people of the Square were given a huge boost with the release from detention yesterday of a man named Wael Ghonim. He's the Google executive seen as having played a key role in using the internet to kick-start the uprising.

Mr Ghonim's first tweet after leaving jail ricocheted around the Arab world:

"Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for."

On his very widely read Arabist blog Issandr El Amrani says timing is important:

"This cathartic moment may be the spark that was needed to revive Egypt's revolutionary fervor... [T]he people in Tahrir may finally have a leader. After two weeks, the world's media is getting tired of this story and there needed to be a relaunch."

But it may well be too late says Joshua Stracher in the US-based Foreign Affairs blog in a piece headlined "Egypt's democratic mirage":

"Despite the tenacity, optimism, and blood of the protestors massed in Tahrir Square, Egypt's democratic window has probably closed. The Egyptian state has not experienced a regime breakdown. The protests have certainly rocked the system and have put Mubarak on his heels, but at no time has the uprising seriously threatened Egypt's regime."

Mr Stracher says the protesters have been successfully contained.

When the uprising began in Egypt, many linked the events in Tunis and Cairo and declared that 2011 might be the Arab world's 1989. Instead, some argue, 2011 is showing just how durable and adaptable the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world truly are.

However, anti-Mubarak blogger Issandr El Amrani still holds out for a revolution on the Arabist blog:

"I'm not as pessimistic. I think the window IS closing but there is still time to make major gains - the only thing is that the opposition must move quickly and coherently."

Meanwhile Egypt's largest circulation, pro-government daily, Al Ahram says that all the answers lie in the less dramatic business of simply talking and listening.

A commentary by Marsi Atallah in Al Ahram says discussions are needed:

"The most important issue that the demonstrations have shown is that Egypt has a youth with the ability to express themselves... However the issue that they are missing is the art of dialogue."

The American magazine Newsweek makes room for the reflections of Fuoad Ajami, one of the Arab world's big thinkers:

"A question had tugged at and tormented the Arabs: were they marked by a special propensity for tyranny, a fatal brand that rendered them unable to find a world beyond the prison walls of the despotism?"

He asks why they hadn't unleashed what he calls the avalanche of anger that we've seen in Tunisia and Egypt:

"An answer, one that makes the blood go cold, is Hama"

He is referring to the city on the plains of Syria where a rebellion was brutally crushed nearly 30 years ago.

"Much of the inner city was demolished, and perhaps 20,000 people perished in that cruel fight. Hama became a code word for the terror that awaited those who dared challenge the men in power. It sent forth a message in Syria, and to other Arab lands."

But now that the fearful spell has been broken, many wonder if the Syrian leadership be challenged in the way Egypt's has. On the pages of Ash Sharq Alawsat we hear from Bouthaina Shaaban who is an advisor to President Assad:

"Everyone is glued to TV sets watching with love what is happening in Egypt. Everything happening there indicates that a new phase of development is ushered for all Arabs."

But she makes no reference to exactly what this might mean for her own country - the word Syria isn't mentioned. Some territory remains too sensitive, it seems.

If there is an Arab spring in the air, Dr Shabaan argues it's yet to bloom in Damascus:

"It is not difficult to trace back the critical moments which accumulated rage in the Arab conscience, particularly the feelings of humiliation, insult and impotence that millions of young people felt as a result of their governments' impotence and silence regarding the tragedies which befell Iraq and Palestine."

And many Arabs would echo that sentiment.

On the other hand, in the interviews you hear from Tahrir Square you don't get a sense of the protesters falling over themselves to talk about the troubles of the Palestinians.

Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz an Israeli-Arab journalist Sayed Kashua says the protests don't impact on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians:

"I have the strong impression, contrary to what many Israelis think, that the demonstrations in Egypt are not against Israel, and that whether or not the revolution succeeds, it is not aimed at toppling the government in Israel but rather the one in Cairo."

And a rather unlikely figure, a retired Saudi Navy Commodore writes in the Arab News that what is happening at the moment is very much Arab business and argues against what he calls "an Israeli conspiracy that never existed":

"To this day, I see Arabs blaming Israelis for young Arab drug addicts, their poor education, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, bad roads, corruption, lack of democracy, the upheaval in Tunisia and the unrest in Egypt... Israel did not open a European bank account for the Tunisian leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. He did."

Amid all the super-charged politics in the Middle East right now, there's still room it seems for a little romance. Many of the region's papers, including the Gulf News, are happy to report the marriage of Ahmad Zaafan, and his fiancée Oula Abdul Hamid. They got married in Tahrir Square not minding, it seems, having an Egyptian tank as the back drop to their wedding photos.

Commentators reflect on the meaning of the crisis in Cairo.

"One of ours was killed," says a woman on the streets of Cairo. "A good man. Educated. The cut-throats killed him in the street," She tells her story on the front page of the Jordan Times, which talks of the city as a bruised, battered place.

And the lingering fear in the air is captured in a piece by Robert Fisk in the Independent , reprinted on the Znet website, where he quotes a demonstrator in Tahrir Square:

"We're safe as long as we have the square. If we lose the square Mubarak will arrest the opposition groups - and there will be police rule as never before... we're fighting for our lives."

But alongside those who are mourning or searching for missing relatives, papers across the Middle East reflect a degree of normality returning to the Egyptian capital. Traffic police are back on the beat and people are taking the chance to stock up with food again.

And the papers chew over the weekend's inconclusive negotiations between the regime and its opponents.

"Problems loom," says an editorial in the Beirut Daily Star:

"But parties that have been so far apart for so long have at least begun talking. It is only through dialogue that such differences can be addressed and even the most arduous journeys of reconciliation begin with a single step. The people of Egypt have manifestly waited long enough. Through decades of poverty and neglect, the downtrodden masses have had their endurance shredded. But desired goals are now within reach. As hard as it is to take and as difficult as it has been to maintain, a little more patience may yield the greatest reward."

The Beruit Daily Star's veteran commentator Rami Ghouri suggests how he thinks the US and Europe should react:

"It is also time for American and European governments - for one moment, for just one brief, shining moment - to declare that they truly support the rights of Arabs to taste genuine liberty, and human and civil rights, rather than to engage in an embarrassing scramble to find the next Arab general to take over from the last Arab general."

Two weeks into the uprising you still find pieces of lyrical writing about the magnificence of the children of Egypt standing up. But a comment piece in the Gulf News strikes a very different note. The thoughts of a businessman, Khalaf al Habtoor are headlined "Egypt's youth uprising has been hijacked":

"There is a fine line between freedom and anarchy and, frankly, the images on our television screens point to the latter. Egypt has become a lawless land. Thugs are torching historic buildings, businesses and shopping centres. Thieves are on the prowl, forcing Egyptian families to barricade themselves in their homes. Foreigners are leaving in droves. The once peaceful Egyptians are beating one another to death. The economy is being decimated by the day. This is not the Egypt I know and love. Tragically, there may be much worse to come. There's a saying: 'Be careful what you wish for. It may just happen'."

With the Muslim Brotherhood at the centre of those weekend negotiations, the movement is dissected. Nowhere more so than in the Israeli papers.

"The (Muslim) Brotherhood is not stupid," writes commentator Barry Rubin in the Jerusalem Post:

"While wealthy, secularized, urban Egyptians may look at it as a peasant rabble, this group has manoeuvred very skilfully in the past. Does it have different factions and tendencies? Certainly it does. Yet it's going to be more united than any other political factor. My concern, at least for the next three years, is not an Islamist Egypt but a radical Egypt. The idea of a `Turkish model' has been raised that is, an Islamist party in power that advances very slowly but steadily toward the goal. Such a government would show its militancy most clearly in foreign policy, which is what other countries are most concerned with, of course."

Writing in the London-based Spectator magazine, John Bradley is equally uneasy about the power of Egypt's Islamists as he considers the country's future:

"Of some things we can be sure: it will be more western, more Islamic and more fervently anti-Zionist... And what of the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood has mellowed of late? This perhaps has more to with its recruitment of media-savvy spokesmen (they are always men) who spout to gullible western 'experts' the virtues of its pro-democracy platform. The general western ignorance about Egypt presents the brotherhood with a tremendous opportunity for media manipulation. Scratch deeper, and you can find its detailed political platform which was published four years ago... It would be terrifyingly similar to Iran's Islamist state."

But by no means all the coverage in the Western media sees the Brotherhood as a looming menace. In the Spectator magazine's rival, the left-wing New Statesman, Tariq Ramadan says Egypt's Islamists have problems of their own to deal with:

"Today's Muslim Brotherhood draws diverse traditions together. But the leadership of the movement - those who belong to the founding generation are now very old - no longer fully represents the aspirations of the younger members, who are much more open to the world, anxious to bring about internal reform and fascinated by the Turkish example. Behind the unified, hierarchical facade, contradictory influences are at work. No one can say which way the movement will go."

The Palestinian Online website comes to the Brotherhood's defence. In an opinion piece it says that casting the movement as some sort of threat is what it describes as "an old trick". It says it's time for the world to get off the Brotherhood's back:

"We've seen its patriotism during the British occupation of Egypt, and their role in Nasser's July revolution. Now the Brotherhood are an integral part of the Egyptian people and its political map. Now they're showing political acumen in dealing with the regime. They've been drained and exhausted by the regime's repression. The minimum that they deserve from us is to defend their right as Egyptians to take part in the political life of their own country."

Fareed Zakaria says in the Washington Post that it is a big mistake to see Egypt's future lying in an Islamist or even Turkish style direction. Instead he suggests you watch the army:

"Since the officers' coup of 1952, Egypt has been a dictatorship, by and for the military... Right now, the military is consolidating power... The businessmen have been turned into scapegoats, sacrificed so the generals can continue to rule. The three people running Egypt - the vice president, prime minister and defence chief - come from the army....the danger is that Egypt will become a sham democracy with real power held in back rooms by generals."