Afterlives of Israel's 1982 Lebanon Invasion: Writing History in a Time of War

FAIN: FZ-299954-24

Seth Anziska
University College London (London WC1E 6BT United Kingdom)

Research and writing a book on the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel, which had wide-ranging impacts throughout the Middle East, changed the relationship between the West and the Arab worlds, and influenced movements for Palestinian self-determination. 

Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was a formative moment in Middle Eastern and international history, transforming the fate of Palestinian self-determination; Lebanese and Israeli politics, society, and culture; Israel’s regional relationships; diaspora Jewish perceptions of Zionism; and western policy across the Arab world. My book project offers the first publicly accessible international history of the war, which has been elided in public discourse. At a moment of profound rupture for Israel, Palestine, and the wider region, how can the historian make sense of this contested past and its multiple legacies? In bringing together a wide range of previously untapped archival material, photographs, film, and oral history interviews across national divides to weave a narrative account of 1982, my project seeks to deepen public engagement with the past while underscoring the vital urgency of historical thinking to make sense of violence unfolding today.