PROVO — Decreasing violence in Israel and Iraq might be increasing the likelihood Brigham Young University students will return to the school's Jerusalem Center for the first time since 2000.

With negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians apparently bearing fruit and tourists returning to Jerusalem, faculty and students hope the peace process in Israel moves quickly enough to allow them to use the center by 2006.

Meetings this week between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fed the campus optimism even though the two leaders expressed concerns about hurdles to near-term peace.

Those hurdles remain significant. So does a major obstacle for BYU students: Israel is still on the U.S. State Department's no-travel list, and BYU policy prevents Study Abroad programs from operating in countries on that list.

University spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said that for now, talk about returning to Jerusalem is nothing more than that, talk and pure speculation.

"We're monitoring the situation daily and we hope soon to have students returning to study at the Jerusalem Center," she said, "but we do not have set plans in place for a return."

Still, students are energized by the possibility.

"I'm excited there might be an opportunity to be in the first group to go back to the Jerusalem Center," said Graham Arnold, 22, a junior from San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

Arnold is majoring in Arabic — he also speaks Italian and Maltese — and to graduate he must complete a semester abroad in the Middle East. The Arabic program takes a group overseas every two years, and students returned from Egypt in December.

Arnold hopes the next scheduled trip, to Jordan in fall 2006, might be shifted to the Jerusalem Center if the peace process permits.

The center is located in East Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives, near Palestinian complexes and Hebrew University. BYU sent 174 students home early from a semester at the center in November 2000 after they had been sequestered inside the building for more than a month due to violence in the city's streets.

The center has been open ever since, but with a small staff of volunteers who host daily tours and weekly church meetings and concerts. Students, however, have not been back.

Before student programs shut down at the Jerusalem Center, BYU was the American university with the most students studying abroad. The center had hosted 37 percent of those students, or 820 per year.

BYU no longer ranks in the top 10, according to an Open Doors study released in November by the Institute for International Education.

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