Jewish Agency to Issue Stipends to Students Who Served in Lebanon

The Jewish Agency on Wednesday announced it would grant stipends totaling over NIS 26 million to students in all institutions of higher education who served as Israel Defense Forces reserves soldiers in Lebanon.

Students who served up to two weeks will receive between NIS 1,000 and 2,500, while students who served between two and four weeks will receive between NIS 2,500 and 4,500.

Bar-Ilan University announced Wednesday that it would also issue stipends to students who served over two weeks in the reserves in Lebanon at a sum equal to half of their full tuition.

It's not clear if the grants already distributed by the Jewish Agency to students living in the north - NIS 20 million - will be sufficient. The students, many of whom were in dire economic straits before the war, were not able to work during the war and many of their places of employment have been closed.

The Agency will also allocate funds to universities in the north for students who did not serve in army.

The Jewish Agency said the purpose of the grants is to "encourage youths from the center and the south to move to the north".

The amount given to each institution will be determined by its losses in terms of registration, damage to the area around the institution, and by the number of students attending institution who are not residents of the north.

The Technion Institute, in Haifa, won't receive money from the grants, since it suffered no losses in registration during the war.

Technion student union head, Mona Davidovich, criticized the guidelines by which the grants are to be distributed. According to Davidovich, students who didn't serve in the reserves during the war were still not able to work during the summer.