Palestinians fired three mortar shells at the Negev on Tuesday, shortly before a planned visit by a delegation of American university presidents, Israel Radio reported.

The university leaders arrived in Israel Sunday on a visit organized by the American Jewish Committee's (AJC) Project Interchange. The project aims to explain Israel's policies to the leaders of U.S. academic institutions and to strengthen scientific collaboration between the two countries.

The visit takes place amid attempts to impose an academic boycott of Israel and controversy over Israel on U.S. campuses between the right and the left.

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The delegation, including representatives of Rice University, Houston; the University of California, San Diego; the universities of Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, South Carolina and Virginia, met on Sunday with Education Minister Yuli Tamir. The guests expressed interest in student exchanges with Israeli universities, but noted the language barrier as an obstacle to American students. Tamir said the Education Ministry would support the establishment of English-language programs for the universities' visiting students.

Later in the week the group will meet Israeli academic leaders, military experts as well as Bedouin and Druze leaders. They will tour the separation fence and the northern border and visit Yad Vashem.

According to Laurie Wexler, executive director of Project Interchange, the visit will encourage encounters between scholars and allow people in leadership positions to pass on information and to learn first-hand about Israel and its complexities.

Eran Lerman, director of AJC's Israel/Middle East office in Jerusalem said campuses throughout the world are one of AJC's major spheres of activity and a delegation like this will give participants the knowledge they need to counter common prejudices.

Dr. Richard Herman, chancellor of Illinois University at Champaign-Urbana, said at the meeting with Tamir that the main obstacle to student exchanges is the State Department's travel advisory against visiting Israel. Herman proposed that the heads of the universities in the group approach the State Department together with a request to re-examine its recommendations.

In the meantime, newspapers in the U.K. reported that Oxford dons have increased the pressure on the national university lecturers' union to abandon its support for a boycott of Israel.

The University and College Union provoked international outrage last month after delegates at its annual conference voted to back calls for a boycott of Israeli universities in protest at the treatment of Palestinians.

But UCU members at Oxford have now voted overwhelmingly to oppose the idea of a boycott.

In a ballot of Oxford UCU lecturers, to which 30 per cent responded, 95 per cent of votes were against using academic boycotts "in all but the most extreme of circumstances."