About 40 years ago, in 1978, Israel invaded South Lebanon for the first time, in retaliation to repeated attacks by Palestinian Fedayeen, and it did so again in 1982. This second invasion gave way to a long-term occupation that was to last until 2000, when Israeli officials decided to unilaterally pull their forces out of Lebanon in a context that had almost completely changed at the local, regional and international levels. By then, a militarized Lebanese Shi'i “resistance” had replaced the initial Palestinian nationalist and “progressive” front against Israel, as embodied by Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed “Party of God”. Though the last direct confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah (2006) is now a decade old, there are clear signs that the antagonism between the two parties (and the societies or communities they claim to represent) is quite vivid, and that both sides are preparing for renewed military confrontation. Drawing on original data gathered as part of a research that focused on UNIFIL, the UN force in South Lebanon, this paper seeks to inquire more deeply into the bitter encounter between Israel and the Lebanese Shi'is in the 1980s and 1990s in order to better understand the mutual construction of the “enemy” that buttresses current enmity between the two sides. Grounded in constructivist and post-colonial approaches, the paper will focus on the early encounter between Israeli forces and the civilian Shi'i population of South Lebanon in an attempt to trace the multiple factors that played into the construction of mutual enmity. Based on UNIFIL reports and interviews with top military officials who served in this force in the 1980s and 1990s, on primary sources (testimonies, movies, reports, etc.) from Israel and South Lebanon, the paper will inquire into the various forms of violence that have been exerted and experienced, as well as the identity frames that allowed for such violence to be projected and how it fed into the construction of a long-term and apparently unsurmountable mutual enmity. Moving beyond this local encounter, the paper will also try to factor in the wider identity interplays in the region (Jews vs. Muslims; Iran as champion of Lebanese Shi'is) and to ask what role might have been played by the weakness, if not absence, of the Lebanese state as both a public service provider (including of security) and a relevant identity framer, in the emergence of non-negotiable primary identities.

Daniel Sobelman's abstract: Since the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Israel and Hezbollah have been intensely preparing and rehearsing for yet a third war. However, more than a decade after the cease-fire took effect it appears that the longest and fiercest military confrontation between the two adversaries may be leading to a profound shift in Israeli-Lebanese relations. For a host of reasons, among them mutual deterrence and a realistic appreciation of the immense costs of another large-scale confrontation between the two sides, the international border between Israel and Lebanon has enjoyed a degree of stability unprecedented in recent decades. The core interests of Hezbollah, which is the most powerful actor in the Lebanese arena, and which arguably wields the greatest influence on Lebanese security, have led it to refocus its energies on the Syrian arena and adopt a policy of deterrence vis-à-vis Israel. Another factor that has contributed to this state-of-affairs is that since the end of the last war in 2006 Israeli and Lebanese military representatives have been holding regular meetings under the auspices of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). These monthly tripartite discussions have provided the two sides with an effective conflict management mechanism, which they have been able to harness in the service of tackling and resolving border disputes, and preventing potentially destabilizing misunderstandings. Under these circumstances, can decades of deep-seated animosity and mistrust gradually give way to a certain degree of mutual trust and long-term stability between the two sides? Examining the shifts in the two states’ relations over the past two decades, as well as the broader geopolitical landscape surrounding Lebanon, this paper will analyze the evolution of Lebanon-Israel relations from instability and confrontation to relative stability, and attempt to provide scenarios that could sustain or unbalance this decade-long equilibrium, and potentially even lead to military confrontation. The paper will draw on primary sources (including interviews, official documents and statements and media resources) and on secondary works, and will employ theories of International Relations (especially Security Studies), conflict and peace.

Since the creation of Israel in 1948, bilateral relations between Lebanon and the Jewish state have been essentially defined by conflicting dynamics, particularly during the Israeli-Arab war (1948-49), Operation Litani (1978), Peace in Galilee (1982), and most recently the '33-Day War’ (2006). However, while the two countries have never engaged in any process of recognition (Brecher, 2017), the fact remains that their truly common history is part of an historical framework the meaning and significance of which are being taught within their respective school systems. This communication, which results from successive fieldwork sessions conducted both in Lebanon and in Israel in 2016 and 2017, intends to examine the mechanisms of definition of otherness by the Lebanese and Israeli ministries of education, as well as their strategies for creating, teaching, and disseminating an official account of their bilateral relations. For this purpose, this study will essentially focus on history books aimed at middle- and high-school students: using a comparative perspective, we will question the mutual representations of an official enemy, explore their significance in terms of national construction of historical narrative, and provide a reflection on the processes of framing of respective nationhoods in school textbooks published during this period. Furthermore, this article intends to provide new prospects on Israeli-Lebanese relations. How are the key or controversial moments of this mutual history understood by the actors involved in the process of history-making? How are they taught – if they are taught – and what does this mean in terms of nationalist ideas and ideologies? What is the significance for these competing nation-building processes? More broadly, this communication will aim to revisit the history of the relations between Tel Aviv and Beirut and to understand its profound significance for the two nations, as well as provide a global reflection on educational processes in a conflicted Middle East.

Few events in the violent history of the Arab-Israeli conflict have gained an iconic stature by all parties involved such as the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Perpetrated on September 17-19, 1982, in the midst of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, a country which itself was embroiled in a vicious civil war, and involving Palestinians as victims, Lebanese as executioners, and Israelis as enablers and bystanders, the Sabra and Shatila massacre has gained a central place in the collective memories of these three societies. The massacre has also gained an iconic stature globally, becoming one of the few events that foreigners still identify today with both the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion of that country. Why has this massacre become so central in the collective memories of Lebanese and Palestinians, despite the fact that other massacres and atrocities were perpetrated during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), some of which resulted in the loss of more human lives? How do Lebanese reconcile the dissonance of seeing Palestinians as victims of the massacre, on the one hand, and blaming them for outbreak of the civil war, on the other hand? What are the reasons that Israelis still remember Sabra and Shatila despite the fact that the First Lebanon War (as the 1982 invasion and the consequent three years of occupation in Lebanon are referred to in Israel) has largely been silenced by government agencies and neglected by the general population? These are the main questions that this paper will explore. Using insights from the field of Memory Studies, the paper will focus on how dynamics of silence, denial and selective remembrance of the Sabra and Shatila massacre have played out among Israelis, Lebanese and Palestinians, and what this can tell us about processes of conflict commemoration among these three societies.

Since the Israeli-Arab War of 1967, Israeli-Lebanese relations have become increasingly volatile, culminating in Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Israel's occupation of parts of Lebanon in the period 1985-2000, and the War between Israel and Hizbullah (or the Second Lebanon War) in 2006. This paper asks how Israel, Lebanon, and the two states' changing relations are represented in several films produced in Israel and in Lebanon in recent decades. On the Israeli side, it will discuss two "waves" of films dealing with Israel's experience in Lebanon: The first "wave" took place in the mid-1980s, during and in the wake of Israel's invasion, and consists of films such as Ricochet (1986), Time for Cherries (1990), Cup Final (1991), and several official and unofficial documentaries. The second "wave" of Israeli films on Israel's experience in Lebanon occurred in the first decade of the 21st century, following the Second Palestinian Intifada (or the al-Aqsa Intifada) and the 2006 War. It includes films such as Beaufort (2007), Waltz with Bashir (2008), Lebanon (2009), Battle of the Undead (2013), and others. On the Lebanese side, the paper will discuss a number of films produced before and after the 2006 war, including The Kite (Le cerf-volant, 2003) and Under the Bombs (2007). Underpinning the discussion of these films are several theoretically grounded assumptions about the relationship between popular culture and politics: First, popular culture reflects wide-held societal values and perceptions, including the perception of the "self", the "other" and the relationship between them. As such, popular culture is an excellent venue for exploring these values and perceptions. Second, popular culture, and especially films (when they attract large audiences, as did some of the above films), can shape public attitudes, and it is thus an imperative to explore these films in addition to other sources (archival materials, memoirs, media reports, etc.). In addition to employing relevant theories from political science, International Relations, sociology and cultural studies, as well as the films themselves, the paper will draw on previous analyses of these films, which, despite their importance, have rarely asked how these films have represented – and possibly affected – Lebanese-Israeli relations.