As the Arab-Israeli conflict escalated during second semester, it was a source of division on the UW-Madison campus, with students organizing rallies and counter-rallies to express opinions as different as day and night.
Trips by U.S. Envoy Anthony Zinni and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region, in which increasingly frequent Palestinian suicide bombings were coupled with more aggressive Israeli military action, did not result in any definitive peace.
During the heat of the conflict, students mobilized on both sides of an issue at the same events. People with signs that read \Boycott Israel"" stood next to those holding signs that read ""I am pro-peace, pro-human rights, and pro-Israel.""
The trend was similar at colleges across the nation, with counter-protesters marching silently around rallies at the University of Michigan and police arresting more than 50 students for occupying a university building and demanding officials divest in American businesses in Israel at the University of California-Berkeley.
The rallies at UW-Madison have remained peaceful, with the highest tensions amounting to shouting matches. But as the school year winds down, this generations-old clash has no clear end in sight.
