HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028713 their living spaces will be kept mercilessly clean. What, of that $1 billion investment, was going to Israel, I asked? Israeli companies were providing cement powder and sand, she said, and the project had consulted with "Israeli experts." "In some cases, you have to do that," she said, alluding to the comparative difficulty of importing building materials through neighboring Jordan. In other words, working with the Israelis was a necessary business decision for a project this large and complex. The fake street, fake valley, fake apartment-display ended in a pleasant sky- lit lobby, where representatives of the Cairo Amman Bank, Arab Islamic Bank, and Arab Bank sat in logoed glass cubicles, available to discuss financing for future purchases. And for the still-skeptical, there's a six-minute 3-D movie, where the city appears in its completed glory -- a place where families picnic, men in business dress greet each other amid bustling plazas, and fireworks crest over soaring apartment towers topped with solar panels. The architecture is tasteful. These aren't dachas plunked on fake islands off the coast of Dubai. It's the kind of place where I, or just about anyone in the world with middle or even upper-middle class aspirations, would want to live. And it looked weirdly familiar.