By Christina Jenkins
Daily Bruin Contributor
The University of California is calling on its students to leave
Israel, citing that “dramatically escalating violence”
in the region has prompted concern for student safety.
The UC will officially suspend its Education Abroad Program in
Israel on April 11, said UCOP spokesman Hanan Eisenman. The
suspension will remain in effect through fall 2002, pending a
security re-evaluation later this year.
EAP offers programs at four schools in Israel. One is in
Jerusalem, one of the most hotly contested cities in the country,
which is attended by at least one of the three UCLA students
currently studying in Israel.
Any UC students who disregard the recommendation that they
return home must enroll in the institution they are presently
studying at, Eisenman said.
“The UC can’t make them come back,” he said,
adding that the students would have to arrange for their credits to
transfer to the UC, and that they would have to work out a schedule
for readmission to their home campus.
The UC will maintain its EAP infrastructure in Israel in
anticipation of the eventual return of UC students to the
country.
Other universities, including the University of Washington and
the University of Colorado, have already recalled their students
from Israel, according to UCOP.
Suspending EAP in countries with political strife is not
unprecedented. EAP was put on hold in China following the Tiananmen
Square massacre, and also in the Middle East during the Gulf
War.
Rachelle Davidoff, a third-year UCLA student, studied in Israel
fall quarter with a program independent of EAP. She lived in the
middle of Jerusalem.
“For the most part, I felt pretty secure,” she said
of her experience.
But she tells a story about once walking through a crowd that
was shouting, “Hitler didn’t finish his job ““ we
will,” which validates her observation that the climate has
worsened.
And, she said, it continues to deteriorate.
“Right now, it’s survival,” she said.
“I took a bus ride home after a bombing. People were
bleeding and screaming,” Davidoff said, adding that she
realized then that “the situation is deeper than
politics.”
Davidoff said she would like to return to Israel in the future,
though her mother was anxious while she was there in the fall.
“You can’t be scared away from everywhere,”
she said. “Hopefully, it’ll be a better climate and
sometime soon I’ll go back.”