CORRECTION APPENDED

As turmoil between Israel and Lebanon continues in the Middle East, Harvard Hillel is going ahead with plans to send a group of students to Israel for a three-week trip this summer.

The trip’s itinerary has been changed, however, so that the students will avoid the northern parts of the country near the Lebanese border.

The trip, which is part of Hillel’s year-long Netivot program and will include about 20 students from Harvard and Yale, is schedule to arrive in Israel on July 30.

Students going on the trip have expressed concern about Hezbollah’s rocket attacks in the region and are closely monitoring the news. But of yesterday evening none had decided to cancel their plans, according to Bernard Steinberg, Hillel’s executive director, and Jackie Granick ’08, who will be going on the trip.

Granick said that many people she knows aren’t happy with her decision to go on the trip.

“All of my friends and family at home think it would be a terrible mistake to go,” Granick wrote in an e-mail. “It is not difficult to imagine the varied directions this crisis might take, and that could include damage to the Israeli international airport, could include suicide bombings in Jerusalem, etc.”

But Hillel administrators emphasized that safety is their primary concern, and that the trip will avoid areas within reach of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal.

“We won’t proceed if we feel that there is any danger at all to our students,” Steinberg said. “We’re hoping and assuming that by the time we go we’ll have a much clearer picture of the situation.”

“At this point, the places in the north that we had originally planned to visit are considered unsafe by the [Israeli] Ministry of Education,” Michael Simon, Hillel’s programming director, said. “Even if there is a very solid cease-fire order put into the place in the next few days, it would be unlikely that we would be able to go to the north during our program,” he added.

Simon also said that students might have to follow stricter restrictions during free time for safety reasons, but he added that it is important for them to be able to relax.

“We want students to have a feeling that they have a little bit of an opportunity while they’re in Israel to hang out in Israel, breathe and enjoy being here,” Simon said.

Simon stressed that the trip follows a number of strict security guidelines. He said the group will communicate on a daily basis about questions of safety with a “situation room” that includes a number of Israeli agencies.

In addition, when the Netivot group leaves a hostel or other place of lodging, it will travel on a private bus with a medic and a security guard. The tour will avoid all public transportation.

This is not the first time that a Netivot trip has faced safety threats in Israel, and Hillel has had to cancel the trip before.

In 2000, when a major Palestinian uprising began, the trip had to be rescheduled for the following winter. According to Steinberg, a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed a number of teenagers just a week before the trip was supposed to depart. [CORRECTION APPENDED]

NORMALCY IN JERUSALEM

Simon, who is already in Jerusalem to prepare for the trip, said that most students who are currently in Israel have until now decided to stay. He emphasized that “things seem normal” in Jerusalem for the most part, but people are following the news very closely.

Simon added, however, that many people in the southern region of Israel have relatives or friends either living in the north or with children in the army.

“There are very few levels of separation here between what’s happening on the front and what’s happening for a family that is not ‘directly’ affected,” he said.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

The July 21, 2006, news article, "Despite Violence, Israel Trip Is a Go," incorrectly stated that a Netivot trip had been postponed in 2000. In fact, the trip was postponed in 2001.