As Sarah Palmer '10 walks down the cold, dark corridor, musty air fills her nostrils. She opens her eyes to the cheerless, hollow common room of an Israeli bomb shelter.The space is dreary and almost completely covered with reinforced cement and plaster, yet it was the only civilian defense against the hailstorm of rockets that rained down on Israel in summer 2006. Although the shelter offered a refuge from the war zone outside, it was truly a prison to the unlucky residents who were once forced to inhabit it. On arrival, Palmer is immediately seized by the misery and despondence she imagines the Israeli civilians felt as they laid holed up in this dreary underground room.

Over winter break, Palmer and 19 other female Brandeis students traveled to Israel for two weeks. They hoped to improve the quality of life for the Israeli citizens of Nahariya, Palmer wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, a city in northern Israel that Hezbollah had continuously bombarded with rockets in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

The program was organized by the Brandeis Hillel and The Joint Distribution Committee, a charitable organization aimed at providing relief for Jewish communities worldwide.

Program participants undertook many charitable projects around the Nahariya community, Palmer said. Projects included painting cartoons of trees and animals on the bomb shelter walls to cheer up the inhabitants; painting houses for people who didn't have the resources to do so; planting a garden outside the city's community center; and working with the elderly, new immigrants, children and women who were victims of abuse.

"While painting in the bomb shelters, I would try to imagine residents of Nahariya, Israelis, whom I feel are my family, stuck in the bomb shelters during the sweltering summer for thirty days at a time," Palmer wrote.

The students met with a representative of the mayor of Nahariya who described the city's demographics and the devastating effect that Hezbollah's rocket fire had on the city and citizens.

Palmer wrote that many students also talked with Israelis who had survived the last Lebanon War and heard firsthand accounts of the rain of rocket fire.

"The mayor's representative really put a face on the rocket attacks that occurred in 2006 and the people that were affected," said Hillary Bender '11, who also participated in the trip.

In addition to the community projects, one group of students painted a mural for Gilad Shalit, Palmer wrote. Shalit was one of three Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped during peacetime, prompting the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Today, two-and-a-half years after the war's conclusion, Shalit is the only one of the three soldiers who remains alive, although he lives in captivity.

Palmer explained that the mural is comprised of illustrations from When the Shark and the Fish First Met, a children's book written by Shalit when he was only 11 years old about friendship between two opposing groups of different backgrounds.

The Hillel trip coincided with the current military clash between Israel and Hamas. In this latest conflict, cities in southern Israel sustained a barrage of constant rocket fire, and citizens were forced to flee to bomb shelters like their northern brethren did just two years ago.

"It was very emotional being in Israel at the time we were," Palmer wrote. "It was strange for me to balance the Israeli mentality of life continuing as usual, with our madricha [guide], Nurit, returning to Be'er Sheva [a southern city] and joking about whether she would still be alive to keep in touch with us and the feeling of loss when we heard the casualty counts and reciting Tehilim (Psalms) when the infantry went into Gaza."

Other students were similarly affected by the conflict and voiced solidarity with the citizens of Israel's southern cities, as well as with Israel's decision to defend its nearly one million civilians besieged by Hamas rocket fire.

"I do feel for the people in Gaza, and innocent lives are being lost," Bender said, "but the truth of the matter is that Israel's cities have been living under siege, and that is no way for anyone to live."

Due to the security situation in Israel, the Hillel group was unable to travel near the Lebanon border, as they had planned. The day the students returned to America, Nahariya was hit by Katyusha rockets fired by a Hamas faction in Lebanon.

"Whether it's good or bad, Israelis have learned to live with this type of situation and move on with their lives because they don't have any other choice," Ronit Broekman '11 wrote in an e-mail to to the Justice. "So that's what we did too," she added.

"Being [in Israel] during the conflict with Gaza has been such an eye- opener for me," Bender said. "From my interactions with Israelis, I was able to graze the surface of the complex issue that is this conflict. I feel very conflicted because I agree with what Israel did, but the truth of the matter is there has been a lot of loss on both sides, and there seems to be no solution for this conflict in the near or distant future.