Columnists were largely preoccupied this weekend with the terrorist massacre in Minya. Among them was Algeria’s Hadda Hezam, who asks in an op-ed carried by Al Masry Al Youm if Egypt’s Coptic population is paying the price of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s hard line at the Arab-American summit in Riyadh. She hypothesizes that El Sisi “pressed on the wound” of terrorism by addressing countries providing funding to terrorism, which instigated a backlash targeting Copts.

Meanwhile, Al Masry Al Youm’s Amr El Shobaky says that Egypt’s current fight against terrorism is different from the battle against the insurgency of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly as the nature of the attacks has become more violent and the surrounding environment has allowed these organizations to flourish. Emad Gad takes to the pages of El Watan to echo El Shobaky’s sentiments and remind us all that a counterterrorism strategy that relies entirely on security and military tactics will not succeed without measures to address the root cultural and ideological causes in tandem.

On a more practical level, Emad El Din Hussein says in a column penned for Al Shorouk that security forces should move to install security cameras in public spaces to discourage criminal and terrorist acts, and help them to identify perpetrators of any attacks that do happen.