In Egypt, only inquiring young minds know about the peace with Israel

CAIRO - Every meeting here is prefaced with the greeting "Salaam Aleichem." The salutations are always followed by "Where are you from?" "Al Quds" - Jerusalem - I respond. "Palestinian? We stand by the Palestinian people suffering the occupation," is the usual answer.

Israelis who say they are Israeli also usually get a friendly greeting, but such meetings are rare; Israelis here are rare. Only about 100 are residents, including a few dozen embassy staffers who have been instructed not to give away their country of origin.

In addition to Israeli tourists, a few Israeli factory managers are based in Egypt. One such plant employs 5,000 locals and creates an indirect livelihood for 10,000. The other Israeli factories employ another few thousand. The factories aren't interested in media exposure.

Israeli students cannot study in Cairo. The American University in the capital has a few Israelis enrolled who hold dual citizenship. Most come for a semester on exchange programs with other American universities.

So young Egyptians don't meet Israelis. Since the school system virtually never mentions the peace accords between the two countries, many university students don't know anything about them.

On a recent Friday during a visit to Cairo's Military Museum at the Citadel, a group of children from Ismailia raced past the displays to the end of the exhibition. A teacher hit two tardy children with a stick. "Where are you from?" they asked the foreigner with the camera. "Al Quds," I replied. Palestinian?" they asked. "Sort of," I said.

Egyptian schoolchildren regularly visit the Military Museum and its panorama of the first day of the war, October 6, 1973. There is mention in the museum of President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and signing of the peace accords, but at the panorama - an impressive display of the crossing of the Suez Canal - it looks like Israel is still the enemy.

The schoolchildren sit in the dark watching a light show about the events of the war: blood, fire and smoke - fighter planes, helicopters, tanks, a waving Egyptian flag, an Israeli flag and Israeli soldiers lying on the ground, and the children are overjoyed.

A university lecturer confirmed for Haaretz that peace is not an integral part of the curriculum. According to him, only the very interested young people, who follow news reports closely, know their country signed a peace agreement with Israel.

This worries Shalom Cohen, Israel's ambassador to Cairo. He says that 30 years after Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, there is a generation that never knew the fear of war but also is unaware of peace. "War is definitely part of the Egyptian narrative, and that is natural. But the chapter is incomplete. Peace with Israel is not a central tenet of the school curriculum."

Cohen attends many cultural events like this month's classic Arab music festival, surrounded by bodyguards that separate him from the general public. He is not invited to all the events the rest of the city's diplomatic corps attends. The media never interviews him.

Cohen reveals no frustration. "The late prime minister Menachem Begin said the troubles of peace are better than the agonies of war," he says. "This is not a cold peace. There are matters on which the dialogue is very good."