RICHARD FREUND is still excavating at Bethsaida -- for now.

"[We've seen] rockets overhead. We just went into the bomb shelters at noon. Tiberias and Haifa have been rocket attacked, and over 1,000 of these Katyushas have hit in the north," Freund said. "The great virtue is, we are not in a major city and are located in a very isolated area. We are north of Tiberias, we are not on the Golan Heights. We are not really a target. But if we hear the sirens go off we head right to the bomb shelters."

His American student volunteers are gradually being evacuated, as circumstances permit.

UPDATE: Here's a letter from volunteer Ken Stammerman at Hippos Sussita, also in the north:

GA letter from a Louisvillian at an Israeli archaeological dig
'I have no intention of leaving before this season ends'

The American volunteers on the archaeological dig I am participating in near a northern Israeli kibbutz would normally expect hazards like the occasional scorpion sting or bruises and twisted ankles from our boulder-strewn worksite -- not this year's incoming Katyusha rockets from Hezbollah positions in nearby south Lebanon.

Twice in the past four days, our afternoons at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the Sea of Galilee have been disrupted by the loud bangs and shaking windows resulting from nearby rocket blasts. The closest so far was at Ramot, an Israeli town a few kilometers up the road, though the sirens and sounds of numerous hits at Tiberias, the largest Israeli town in the area, a scant five miles across the sea, have also rattled nerves and walls at the kibbutz.

[...]

The foreign student volunteers from this site have been evacuated.


The Tel-es-Safi/Gath excavation, which is in much farther south, also continues.