In 1975, the Lebanese civil war broke out, largely stimulated by Israel and the United States. Palestinian refugee camps around Beirut were besieged in 1976 and systematically bombarded; many were entirely destroyed by Phalangist soldiers and Israeli forces under the command of the Israeli Minister of Defence, Shimon Peres. The Israelis invaded the south of the country on March 15, 1978, hoping to strike a fatal blow to Palestinian and Lebanese resistance in Lebanon; after turning over the positions they had captured to the Phalange militias, they withdrew. At the same time, Egyptian President Sadat, paying no heed to the united Arab front, negotiated and signed the Camp David Agreement with his Israeli and American partners in September 1978, accords which allowed Israel to concentrate all its military forces on the northern border.

Having done so, in June 1982, the State of Israel invaded Lebanon again with the objective of “cleansing” Beirut of the PLO and the Lebanese national movement, and to place an ally as the head of state. The siege was horrendous: fragmentation bombs were dropped on the cities and camps; some 70% of the houses in Rashidiya and Ein al-Hilweh refugee camps were entirely destroyed. The war cost, according to estimates, between 10,000 and 30,000 Lebanese and Palestinian lives.

In August 1982, the major powers evacuated a group of PLO fighters from Lebanon; its leaders went to Tunis, where they established their headquarters. At the end of August, UN forces withdrew from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, leaving the field open to a new wave of Israeli aggression. On September 15, the Israeli army entered West Beirut “to keep the peace.” From September 16-18, the horror culminated in the camps of Sabra and Shatila, where over 3,000 unarmed Palestinian refugees in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by the Lebanese militias, under the direction and supervision of the Israeli army, which controlled all entrances to the camps. The camps of South Lebanon remained under the control of the Israelis and the Lebanese militias until 1985, when the Israeli army withdrew farther south.

At the same time, the conflict between the different Arab factions increased, culminating in 1987. Several refugee camps were destroyed. Faced with the Occupation and its corollaries (repression, deportation, land confiscation, settlements, humiliations, etc.), the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories relit the torch of their struggle. On December 9, 1987, the Intifada (in Arabic “shaking off”) erupted. The entire Palestinian society took part in it, responding to the orders of the Unified Command of the Intifada or to the calls of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas, which was founded on December 14, 1988). This struggle confronting Israeli soldiers and settlers, actions of civil disobedience (refusal to pay taxes or fines, strikes, boycott of Israeli products, etc.) and a reorganization of civil society through popular committees of solidarity and mutual assistance, responsible especially for food supplies, education, and health.