Lamb decribes GLCA program in Israel
By Catherine Lamb

Editor's Note: Catherine Lamb, associate professor of English, is faculty leader of the Great Lakes College Association's Jerusalem Program during this semester. Lamb , along with nine GLCA students, is in Israel with the program.

We are just past the halfway point of the Great Lakes Jerusalem Program - a good time, I think, to assess the program and encourage interested students to apply.

All nine students here would agree with me that the program is both rewarding and challenging on intellectual and personal levels. The academic focus of the program - the Israeli/Palestinian conflict - makes for a complexity and intensity atypical of most undergraduate work.

There are also significant cultural differences. Some, such as the food and the hospitality of both Israelis and Palestinians, are a continuing pleasure. (Okay, I'd love a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow morning, and I've never eaten so many tomatoes and cucumbers in my life - but I also have on my desk a half-eaten mango, the biggest and best I've ever tasted.) The regular harassment I face as a woman I would happily do without. I feel very safe, though, on the streets.

When we arrived at the end of August, we did not use Israeli public transportation because of the recent bus bombings, but now we feel comfortable doing so with signs of cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the extremist Palestinian group.

To give you a small taste of what the program is like, three days ago we returned from a "Zionism" tour, a tour of the Golan Heights (prior to 1967, a part of Syria), and had conversations with Israelis adamantly opposed to returning any part of the Golan and some who argue the only moral action is to give it up. We spent several hours at a Kibbutz literally on the Lebanese border, with the noise of shelling as a continual background.

The Zionism tour was balanced in early October by a geography tour of Israel and the West Bank, led by a Palestinian geographer who seems to know every inch of the countryside. The trip was greatly complicated by the fact that it occurred right after the signing of Oslo II, the agreement that spells out the next stages of the peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians. The West Bank and Gaza were "closed" by the Israelis to control possible terrorist action - meaning residents of either area could not leave without facing heavy fines and arrest if they were caught.

Our geographer lives in the West Bank and therefore could only be with us when we were in the West Bank. We were most fortunate to have along a German graduate student who is well-trained in the geography of this area.

Yesterday afternoon the students left for their second three-week homestay. If, previously, they were with an Israeli family, now they are with a Palestinian family, and vice versa. Some of the Israeli families are Orthodox. Students who stayed with them earlier now have some appreciation of what it means to keep the Sabbath: they have shared in the rituals of the traditional Friday evening meal; they have also learned what it is like not to ride in a car, write, or turn on a light for one day of the week - and the relaxation that such disciplines can bring. Students living with Palestinian families are fortunate enough to be in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, in homes which are 500 years old. There aren't really houses in the Old City, but rather dwellings all connected together, around and on top of each other.

I haven't said anything about the courses in Israeli Society and Politics, and Palestinian Society and Politics. The professors are excellent, and when I hear the questions the students ask guest lecturers, I realize how much they - and I - have learned.

The program is not for everyone, but it could also be one of the most important experiences of your life.