An Egyptian military court sentenced a blogger who criticized the army to two years in prison on Wednesday after he went on a hunger strike to protest an initial three-year sentence.

"In the name of the people, Michael Nabil has been sentenced and punished with two years in prison and fined 200 pounds ($33)," the court said after a retrial.

Islamists who swept to victory in the first stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections were looking to extend their winning streak in a second round of voting on Wednesday.

Some 18.8 million Egyptians are eligible to cast their ballots in this round of the first legislative polls since a popular uprising ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year-rule in February.

Egypt's Islamists said on Sunday they would not accept any interference from the ruling military council over the future constitution amid uncertainty about the army's role in the process.

"No one except the elected parliament has the right to draft legislation," Khairat al-Shater, the number two in the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest Islamist movement, said on Twitter.

Israel's new ambassador to Egypt, Yaakov Amitai, is to take up his post in Cairo on Monday, three months after an attack on the mission, a foreign ministry source said.

The source, declining to be named, said Amitai, replacing Yitzhak Levanon who has completed his term as ambassador to Egypt, would present his credentials at a later date.

Egypt's biggest political group the Muslim Brotherhood clashed with the country's army leaders on Thursday, accusing them of trying to "marginalize" parliament over the writing of a new constitution.

Mohammed el-Baltagui, one of the leaders of the Brotherhood's political party, said the movement had pulled out of a contact group with the army leaders who have been in power since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in February.

Egypt's military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi swore in a new cabinet on Wednesday including new Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri and a former police chief to head the interior ministry.

The new line-up of 30 ministers, including the prime minister, retains 12 from the last cabinet. Three ministers appointed by strongman Hosni Mubarak shortly before his overthrow have also survived the shuffle.

An Egyptian court rejected Wednesday a petition to remove the chief judge in ex-president Hosni Mubarak's murder trial, filed by a lawyer claiming the judge favored the defense, state media reported.

"The Cairo appeal court has backed keeping judge Ahmed Refaat in the trial of former president Hosni Mubarak," the official MENA news agency reported, adding the court also fined the lawyer who moved to dismiss him.

Egyptian presidential candidate Mohamed elBaradei has accused Islamist parties which won a majority in elections last week of relying on slogans which he said would be laid bare if they gained power.

The Islamists picked up two-thirds of votes cast for parties in the election last Monday and Tuesday in a third of Egypt's districts, with a new hardline Salafi party winning almost a quarter.

Israeli troops were on very high alert along the southern border with the Egyptian Sinai on Monday over fears a cell of gunmen had crossed the border into southern Israel, a security source told Agence France Presse.

The state of alert was based on "intelligence information about a cell of terrorists planning an attack" on a road which runs close to the border in the southern Negev desert, the source said.

Islamists trounced their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypt's first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, figures showed on Sunday, with one in four voters choosing hardline Salafists.

Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast for parties in the first round of parliamentary polls, while the secular liberals who played a key part in the January-February uprising managed just 13.4 percent.