Peace With Israel

NYT reports Egyptian movie audiences are not accustomed to laughing about the Arab conflict with Israel, or to seeing Israeli diplomats portrayed as regular folks living next door. But in Egypt's box office hit, "The Embassy Is in the Building," the director, Amro Arafa, uses comedy to try to get Egyptian audiences to consider a most serious point: that peace with Israel is in Egypt's own interest.

That is the truth. Peace is much better than war.

"We have signed peace with this country," a state security agent says during a pivotal scene in the movie. "This is our country's policy, and it is for our interest. Do you want to be against the country's interests?" The security man, who spoke about the need for "peaceful coexistence with them," was talking to a character played by Adel Imam, Egypt's most famous comic actor, arguably one of the only actors in Egypt who could pull off such a movie and still keep the audience laughing. "The Embassy Is in the Building," which is still in theaters, was the second biggest hit at the box office this year among Egyptian-made movies, bringing in nearly $3 million. It is a wry look at Egyptian society with a main character who lives in Dubai and has a taste for beautiful married women. He gets fired after having an affair with his boss's wife, and returns home to Egypt only to find that the Israeli ambassador, David Cohen, has moved into his building. The movie pokes fun at leftists still clinging to pan-Arab nationalism and takes a swipe at a nationalist poet, Amal Donqol, who wrote a poem saying Egypt and Israel could never have normal relations. It spoofs Islamists as goofy men with beards and guns, and it lampoons the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera.

Congratulations for your bravery.

But this is not just a movie aiming to make people laugh - according to critics, political observers and the director - but an effort, however ham-handed, to use the Egyptian cinema to make people at least entertain the notion that peace with Israel is good for Egypt, even while Israel may itself remain an object of hate.