Junior Jewish Studies major Rachel Tranen was planning on spending the semester abroad in Israel before deciding to stay at Maryland.

Liora Herman had her heart set on studying abroad in Israel since she had been five years old, and as a high school junior, she was just days away from realizing that ambition.

Then another round of violence in the Middle East occurred and her parents decided to keep her home.

That was the spring of 2003. Nowhere does history seem to repeat itself more relentlessly than on Israel’s borders, but as a junior Jewish studies major, Herman refused to let the latest conflict get in her way.

“If you stop me now you’re not going to be able to stop me in college,” Herman recalls telling her parents almost four years ago. So even as the one-day count of Hezbollah-fired rockets reached 156 and Israel began calling up reserve troops for the month-long war this summer in southern Lebanon, she left for Tel Aviv University July 30.

While Herman was determined to keep her study abroad plans, many American students have experienced indecision about venturing to the Middle East this fall, even in spite of the recent cease-fire. Their concerns highlight what Israel’s foreign minister deems an “explosive” situation in Lebanon and the Middle East as a whole – a situation unlikely to resolve itself in the near future.

Tel Aviv University has about 180 American students enrolled for the semester, according to its New York office. Only three are from this university, which has five students in Israel, according to the study abroad office. Maryland students are also registered to study in Egypt and Jordan, whose governments face heightened security risks and increasingly hostile public opinion concerning the civilian death toll in Lebanon.

During the height of the conflict, senior government and politics major Teresa Leahy sacrificed her plans to study Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman, saying the program was still on but she had received an e-mail warning students to avoid street protests. She hopes to visit Jordan in graduate school, but her skepticism of cease-fires is evident.

“Something like that you can’t really be sure is going to be permanent, especially when dealing with Hezbollah,” Leahy said.

Rachel Tranen, a junior Jewish studies major, was supposed to leave for Tel Aviv University with Herman, but deferred her study abroad plans, at least until this spring. After planning the trip with Herman for months, Tranen and her parents decided it was too dangerous.

Tranen said her family was getting urgent calls from friends and relatives every day – some whom they barely speak to – asking if they still planned to send her to Israel.

“It was just getting to be too much,” she said. “The last thing I want to do is have my parents every day worrying about my safety.”

But for others, the allure of the Middle East is strong enough to overcome the risks they could face in their travels.

“I just grew up with this deep connection to the state,” Herman said, as she moved around her apartment in St. Mary’s Hall preparing her belongings for storage a few days before her flight. “I visited when I was in third grade and just kind of fell in love.

I always grew up feeling like it was home, feeling like I belonged there, that I was safe there,” she said. “It was a goal of mine always to be there. People would call me a Zionist.”

Anson Knausenberger, a senior government and politics major who has been at the American University of Egypt since June, will also stay through the fall.

Knausenberger wrote in an e-mail from Cairo that he has perceived a “reinvigorated anti-American government sentiment” and a sense of solidarity with Hezbollah.

While Knausenberger admits he is concerned about security, he said, “It’s all part of an unforgettable experience. … The only thing to be scared of is one’s preconceived notions.”

Contact reporter AndrewVanacore at vanacoredbk@gmail.com.