Setting the Record: Withaqeyya and the Politics of Collective Memory

Tell us about yourself and background. What inspired you to begin this archival work?

When we were young, we watched a cartoon on television in which a bunch of children would go to a local archive, sift through documents, investigate, and draw conclusions. I’ve been fascinated by archives ever since.

I’ve always been drawn to paper and to libraries. I used to imagine that, through archives and libraries, I could become someone who knows; I wanted to rely on the power of knowledge.

In 1996, we were displaced to Dahieh while making hreeseh. I’ve witnessed cycles of displacement and return, displacement and return. We grew up in an atmosphere of occupation and resistance. Our house often hosted resistance fighters when they needed a place to stay.

We had a rich, diverse library: Islamic books, leftist literature, newspapers, magazines. I considered majoring in translation, but we were a lower-middle -class family, and my dad couldn’t afford the transportation costs from Dahieh to Fanar, where the Lebanese University’s only translation program was located. So I enrolled in Archiving & Documentation at the Faculty of Information — a specialization that stayed active for only one year before being restructured and renamed Information Science. I remember thinking, “If I put together a library, I would practically live there and read all the time,” and that was enough for me.

One day during my second year at university, I was reading in the faculty library when a friend and colleague sat next to me. I’ll never forget that day. I took out a piece of paper and started sketching. She asked me what I was drawing, and I told her about the museum. I said, “This is going to be my graduation project.” That was back in 2007.

By the time I graduated, the museum was still my dream, and I imagined many paths toward achieving it: working at a research institution, organizing its library and archives, contributing to its research development. And that’s exactly what I did. But I wanted more.

What was the first personal item you saved, and what was its significance to you?

I still have the stickers distributed at school by the Islamic Resistance Support Organization during Resistance Week. As kids, we would contribute L.L. 1,000 to support the resistance.

The idea of the resistance felt like a dream to us: incredibly powerful, yet shrouded in secrecy. We knew nothing of the fighters themselves. People were constantly coming and going from our home. Only later would we learn that some had been martyred. It was only when we would attend martyrs’ funerals that we would realize they had once visited our house.

Tell us about Withaqeyya. What exactly does it seek to preserve?

Withaqeyya is an archive that belongs to ordinary families and individuals: people like us, who carried out acts of resistance. They are the true makers of our modern history. Regardless of the circumstances in which armed struggle emerges, resistance always rises from within us, through our actions. The personal archives in our homes are products of the fighting spirit ingrained within us, and together, they tell the story of Lebanon’s struggle against the Israeli enemy.

Archives are crucial to reshaping our consciousness. The Israeli enemy continuously tries to separate people from resistance movements, but the archive proves that distinction to be false. The Beirutis who fought the 1982 invasion during the siege of the capital were diverse, and their resistance was formidable. Yet, the roles of Beirut, Saida, and Tripoli in resisting the Israelis are not sufficiently documented. As a result, unfortunately, the narrative of resistance in these cities has been overshadowed by the civil war.

I dream of seeing these family archives incorporated into school curricula, and eventually, into the National Archive.

It’s difficult to convince people to give up their archives. Yet by doing so, they are meaningfully contributing to society. That contribution is, in itself, an act of resistance.

Why was it important to you to create a museum for the archive?

Gaza and al-Aqsa Flood were the real turning point. I asked myself, “Amani, what are you doing? We’re being killed. We are not far from Gaza. We’re not distinct; we’re connected.”

What I learned along the way was important, but there was still so much work to do.

I engaged with elderly people to document oral histories. But it was my conversations with younger people that revealed a different problem: many born after 2000 know little about the years before the liberation of 2000. Many know almost nothing about the Border Strip, for example.

Al-Aqsa Flood shook us all. I felt like I had to do something — that Withaqeyya needed to reach the youth differently.

Archives become more valuable when they’re exhibited and seen, and al-Aqsa Flood pushed me to finally establish a museum. We found a cheap place in Harouf and settled there because we didn’t have a lot of money. We began setting up the museum during the war, but when the situation worsened, we had to move the archive out of the South to protect it.

I had long envisioned a place where Withaqeyya’s records could be displayed and shared. Ideally, I wanted a mobile museum that exhibits archives across major cities and receives documents from local communities. But mobility is expensive, so we set up a temporary site in Harouf for four months.

When visitors saw the range of material on display — magazines, newspapers, stickers, personal diaries — all tied to the occupation, they understood that these items weren’t randomly selected, but part of a historical narrative. We displayed the records chronologically, on a timeline with infographics, to map the geography of the occupation and place it within its historical and political context.

The museum also aimed to educate the younger generations and to help them understand the value of the documents found in their own homes.

Can you talk about the research initiatives that have emerged from Withaqeyya?

After the Zionist 66-Day War on Lebanon in 2024, Withaqeyya launched an ongoing oral history project focused on elderly residents of border villages. We trained 21 volunteers in oral history methods to document the memories and personal histories of older generations in the South, particularly their lives under repeated Zionist aggression.

During the ongoing war’s 2026 wave, we also launched a series of workshops centered on personal diaries as primary historical documents. These workshops focus on developing diary-writing practices and methods that can preserve everyday experiences consistently. So far, about 40 young people have been trained to maintain regular and structured personal diaries.

Another ongoing project, developed in collaboration with al-Maaref University and its students, is building an audio archive documenting people’s experiences during the support war that began in 2023. Students from Baalbek-Hermel and the South recorded oral histories with members of their communities who were forced to flee their homes, documenting regions that are often absent from dominant historical narratives.

The interviews explore recurrent experiences of displacement and return, grassroots initiatives organized to support displaced families, and the work of paramedics during the war. The archive also includes oral testimonies from survivors of the pager attack.

How does the way you organize the archive shape the stories it tells? What principles guide this process?

Anyone collecting archives must ask themselves: “Why am I collecting this?”

Some collect out of passion. Others to prove something. Some focus on the civil war, others on Israeli assaults on Lebanon or on acts of resistance against the Zionists. The purpose of collecting is not simply to accumulate records. Collecting archives, by itself, cannot be the end goal.

The crucial question is what comes next. Once you answer that question, you begin constructing an ideological framework for your work. The clearer your focus, the clearer your path becomes.

Any civilization that seeks to tell its story must begin with its archives. The archive preserves a people’s collective memory since documents are evidence.

When I first saw the document outlining Saad Haddad’s plan to establish a “Free Lebanon State” and issue identification cards, I was stunned. The sheer weight of such a document — so definitive, so irrefutable — is what makes archives powerful.

Oral history is memory. Before recording technologies existed, stories were passed down orally through designated storytellers who were responsible for transmitting oral histories. Today, we can record these histories and give them material form. Through documentation, we preserved stories that might otherwise be erased or rewritten.

That’s why we collect archives: to safeguard the truth and ensure that the stories of those who fought, suffered, and resisted are never forgotten.

What's next for Withaqeyya? What is your long-term vision for this project?

We aspire to become a full-fledged institution with a dedicated team and a space, but we don’t have the funding needed. We received donations around the time of the Harouf museum’s opening from people who believe in the project; they trusted us with their documents and donated what they could, often $10 at a time. We pooled those funds to build the website and create a companion virtual platform.

When we were in Harouf, we meticulously digitized every document, to preserve it exactly as it is. Having the space, even for just a few months, helped people understand the initiative, encouraged them to contribute material, and introduced younger generations to the history of occupation.

We hope to become an institution like the Institute for Palestine Studies, whose archives were influential enough to become a target. Raiding and looting the institute was a military objective during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Many of its publications remain essential references on the history of Israeli aggressions on Lebanon. Mundhir Jaber’s book on the Lebanese Border Strip, for example, is a foundational text documenting military events under occupation through 1990. Without it, I wouldn’t have understood how Saad Haddad formed the first strip, or how the second was established, or the political, educational, and economic realities of that period.