Can anyone bring Egyptians back together?

Egypt's interim president, Adly Mansour, held back on naming liberal opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei as his prime minister, after a leading, ultraconservative Islamist party, Al Nour, objected to the selection of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning longtime diplomat. Al Nour was the only Islamist party to back the overthrow of the elected President Mohamed Morsi, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but on Monday it pulled out of negotiations over forming a provisional government after soldiers killed dozens of Islamist protesters outside the military compound where Morsi was being held.

State media outlets reported on Sunday that Ziad Bahaa el-Din, a former head of Egypt's investment authority, might be named as interim prime minister instead. One Nour leader said he was "one of the liberal figures that we greatly respect," while others rejected him, too. Leaders of the Tamarod, or "Rebel" movement, which spearheaded the protests that let to Morsi's ouster, said the group "would not recognize" or "deal with" any prime minister other than ElBaradei.

Will anyone be able to bring Egypt's feuding factions together as the country spirals into chaos?

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Morsi was only elected a year ago, and the military's decision to give him the boot was bound to trigger an angry backlash from the Islamists who helped him win a narrow majority in the country's first free elections. Reconciliation was never going to be easy between the opposition and Morsi loyalists. But David Kenner at Foreign Policy notes that the battle over the selection of the interim prime minister suggests that even keeping together the anti-Morsi coalition could prove to be an impossible task.

It is a bit early to be predicting the failure of the provisional government that will lead the country to new elections. Still, says Patrick Martin at the Toronto Globe and Mail, this "was an embarrassing stumble out of the gate by the new military-backed leadership." It shows, he says, "how hard it is to reconcile the secular and leftist opposition with ultra-religious Islamists who represent opposite poles of the political spectrum." In a way, though, the fact that the army is even permitting such bickering over the makeup of the new government is an encouraging sign, according to some leaders quoted by Martin.

What makes the job of the new prime minister — whoever it is — so tricky is that Al Nour is more hardline than the Muslim Brotherhood. Its leaders wanted Egypt's new constitution to enshrine Islamic law, and was angry at the dominant Brotherhood for watering it down in a nod, however feeble, to the secular opposition. The military's move against Morsi, however, provided a political opening for Nour's leaders, so now they are offering the anti-coalition the Islamist support it must have to claim legitimacy. One thing is certain, says David D. Kirkpatrick at The New York Times: "The bedfellows could not be stranger."