Alsiekh is on a self-appointed information campaign to show BYU students and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that most Palestinian Muslims are peaceful people who would fit well into LDS communities.

Likewise, Luthy said that Palestinian suicide bombers who attack Israel are a tiny minority of extremists.

"The Palestinians are family-oriented and extremely hospitable," Luthy said. "You could never outdo their hospitality. We go into the Old City, and many of the Palestinian merchants ask, 'When are the students coming to the Jerusalem Center? We miss the students.'"

On the other hand, Alsiekh and Luthy said many Palestinians believe Americans are foul-mouthed and violent, wear skimpy clothes and engage in free sex.

"When my wife and I lived in Finland in the '80s," Luthy said, "I often commented that if my only source of information about America were television, I would never go there. We get the mainstream television stuff here (in Israel and Palestine), full of violence and sex. It doesn't make America look very good. Israeli and Palestinian viewers don't see Provo, Utah, on their TV sets, that's for sure."

The Jerusalem Center annually advertises the scholarship programs at Arab universities and in Arab papers. Peterson said the program began in the mid-1980s and has to date funded 52 Palestinian students.

BYU announced the resumption of its study-abroad program at the Jerusalem Center in the spring but scuttled it again after fighting broke out between Israel and Lebanon.

"Before the war in Lebanon, it was safe enough to send students back there," Alsiekh said, "but because the program includes commuting every day through the region, including northern Israel, it would be dangerous to send the students now."

The center, which overlooks the Mount of Olives, has room for 170 students. Alsiekh is anxious for the cultural exchange to again become a two-way street because he is disappointed more Utahns don't better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"BYU's students can make a difference," Alsiekh said. "I've met a lot of people here who studied at the Jerusalem Center, and they saw the reality there."

The wall recently built near Jerusalem to improve Israeli security has cut off access to the city for many Palestinians in the West Bank. Alsiekh had to rely on Luthy and other American volunteers at BYU's Jerusalem Center to ferry applications and immigration and visa forms to him at a security checkpoint.

The wall is three lines of fence, one electrified, near Alsiekh's home outside Hebron in the West Bank. His family raises olives and sheep and lost 85 olive trees to the fence wall when it was built last year. The loss was doubly frustrating, he said, because there was no authority to which his family could appeal for compensation.

"Peace is the only solution for this problem," he said. "I think it's possible if people understand."

For Alsiekh and Maragha, that kind of cross-cultural and political understanding is a side benefit to their English studies at BYU and fuel to their hope that BYU students soon return to Jerusalem.

Maragha said when he arrives home this weekend, he'll have a message for his family and friends.

"The people at BYU are so friendly," he said. "They are so much like us."

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com