Emergency preparedness for airstrikes in Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon's collections hold the material record of the country's past: the National Museum of Beirut, with its Phoenician and Roman antiquities, the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA) archive documenting decades of excavation, the Arab Image Foundation's photographic holdings, and independent institutions such as MACAM, a modern art museum near Jbeil.

From October 2023, Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon intensified, and after the September 2024 attack on wireless communication devices, strikes expanded to Beirut, the Bekaa, and beyond. Museums faced blast damage, shattering glass, fire, and looting, with staff and guards remaining on site through the bombardment. MACAM sat close to targeted villages, and a government-owned fine art collection was stored in a space also sheltering displaced people.

With €26,000 in support from CER across two phases, NGO Biladi, which leads CER's Regional Hub in the Levant, carried out emergency preparedness measures. At the National Museum, the team ran a security assessment, boarded up windows against shockwaves, applied anti-shatter film to the glass, and installed fire and smoke detection in the electrical rooms, complementing a parallel ALIPH-funded intervention. At MACAM, five staff spent five days wrapping the collection, installing humidity control, sheeting the archives, and repairing electrical faults that posed a fire risk. Seven DGA volunteers, supervised by Biladi over 21 days, repacked and rehoused the archive.

The second phase funded a shelter for the fine art collection, improved storage at the Arab Image Foundation, and beds and secure storage for the guards keeping watch overnight at the National Museum.