The Israeli Invasion of Southern Lebanon and the Siege of Beirut

Abstract

During the siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982, the revolution’s fighters and its allies from the National Lebanese Forces were bombarded by the Israeli army from land, sea, and sky. Several films in the process of production were lost, and there were attempts at protecting the Palestinian Cinema Institution archive. The siege lasted more than eighty days and resulted in the exodus of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leaders and forces out of Lebanon. The archive, however, remained in Beirut, due to its large size and the absence of any means to move it with the PLO’s forces. While there were plans to move it later, the worsening conditions of the Lebanese civil war and the siege of the Palestinian camps in Beirut prevented this, and it disappeared under vague circumstances.