During this year’s spring break (2014), a group of 27 Georgetown SFS students embarked on a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Organized by several MSFS students, Michael Podberezin (’14), Rob Sotolar (’14), Sasha Martin (’14), Brendan Foo (’15), Dan Granot (’15), and Nadav Greenberg (’15), the ten-day trip was the second of its kind, following last year’s successful tour.
The itinerary included a combination of field excursions with briefings on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Israel’s relations with its neighbors and its internal politics. Students met with both Israeli and Palestinian government officials, including members of the Knesset Hilik Bar, Moshe Feiglin, and Ahmad Tibi, Israeli Prime Minister’s spokesperson Mark Regev, Chief Palestinian Negotiator Dr. Saeb Erekat, and other Palestinian politicians. Each point of view was balanced by one from the opposing side (e.g., Israel/Palestine, left-wing/right-wing). Other dynamic speakers who spoke with the group included Australian UN Peacekeepers at the Syrian border, Dr. Yoaz Hendel, an Israeli publicist and the founder of Blue and White Human Rights Organization, and Gabriel Bach, Holocaust survivor and deputy prosecutor in the Eichmann trial.
The exchange of rocket fire on the day the group was scheduled to visit the Gaza border and an Iron Dome, Israel’s air defense system, made the trip especially eventful. The majority of the students opted to tour Sderot as scheduled, a border town where the residents have 15 seconds between the time their air raid siren sounds and when the rocket hits. Fortunately, no alarms went off during the visit.
To see the cultural side of the country, the students toured Old City Jerusalem and slept in Bedouin tents in the Negev desert. Heavy rain in the desert obscured the sunrise and made camel rides impossible, but as a result, the group was able to have a local experience: flood watching. The bus made an unscheduled stop at a canyon, which, normally completely dry, had turned into a raging river and waterfalls. This is a rare sight, especially in the desert, and only lasts several hours.
The group spent their last day – a sunny one – on the beach in Tel Aviv before flying back to a snowy DC.