CAIRO - "It's unfair to mix art with politics," commented Sawsan Abdel-Gawad, an Egyptian woman who had just bought a ticket to watch the US film Fair Game, which was due to be screened last week before hitting a snag, due to the fact that an Israeli actress stars in it. "Innovation and creation are different from politics. I, for one, disagree with normalisation with Israel until a just solution for the Palestinian problem has been reached. However, Fair Game has been produced in the US," Abdel-Gawad added. An Egyptian company had spread the word that it would screen Fair Game, also starring Egyptian actor Khaled el-Nabawi, last Wednesday, before the Censorship Board delayed its screening. The delay is linked to the fact that the Federation of Artistic Unions, headed by veteran scriptwriter Mamdouh el-Leithi, has rejected the film, because Israeli actress Liraz Charhi is starring in it. The federation, like most other cultural, if not all, institutions in Egypt, is against having normal cultural ties with Israel. "Israel will succeed in depriving us of watching world-class creations. No, this is not a solution," said Wafiq Raafat, a 32-year-old physician. "However, normalisation will neither solve our problems with Israel nor deeply harm Israeli artists," he added. Arguments erupted in the Egyptian media last week, when the licence to screen the film was delayed. Sayyed Khattab, the head of Egypt's governmental Censorship Board, said that he liked the movie but feared the presence of an Israeli actress. "We will have a meeting with the Cinema Industry Chamber and the unions of actors and cinema men this week in order to take a decision," Khattab explained. He added, however, that the anti-normalisation decision was a national trend, agreed upon by most Egyptian institutions. Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. But anti-Israel feelings run high due to its anti-peace policy. Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn as the two leads and co-produced by Imagination Abu Dhabi, follows the true story of Valerie Plame, a loyal American secret agent, who gets the sack in a lurid public scandal. In light of this incident, it became clear that the Bush Administration was bent on discrediting revelations of falsified evidence in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
