111101 entry from the books the books disagree: each version, with the date it gives
1992
From the books
Demolitions begin in downtown Beirut for the reconstruction company.
From 1992 Solidere blew up shell-damaged central Beirut: part of the medieval wall, the gold souk ruins, Ottoman façades. Its 'tabula rasa' angered press and universities.
Syria's vice-president Khaddam comes to arbitrate the 'troika'.
In January 1992 Vice-President Khaddam came to Beirut to explain how Taif should regulate the troika of president, prime minister and speaker: the first of many Syrian arbitrations, mostly his.
A general strike against the cost of living brings down the Karami government.
Karami resigned after the 6 May general strike paralysed the country and rioters, often anti-Syrian in tone, attacked the prime minister's office and property of leading figures. Rashid Solh's cabinet, formed in Damascus, called elections.
Army commander Emile Lahoud deploys troops to take back public property held by wartime militias.
Protests by Druze clerics and civilians, organised by Walid Jumblatt, blocked the army in the Chouf; the government gave way and left Beiteddine palace in his hands.
Hundreds of Aoun supporters are arrested for distributing leaflets.
Leaflets urging 'real independence' or a boycott led military police to detain young Aounists; some faced military courts. Amnesty International counted about 200 arrests by December 1992, citing ill-treatment.
Parliament passes a new electoral law for 128 deputies.
Mixing large and small constituencies, the law set 128 seats, not Taif's 108; Hanf sees Syria's allies as the gainers. Albert Moukheiber called it 'imported and imposed'.
A general strike against the elections; the main Christian forces call a boycott.
The 23 July strike against the elections held where Syrian troops were absent. The Patriarch and his synod led opponents, wanting no vote until the displaced returned and the occupation ended; the Kataeb, LF, NLP, National Bloc and some Muslim figures joined.
First parliamentary elections since 1972, boycotted by most Christians.
In Baalbek-Hermel Hezbollah's list defeated the speaker's, and with Amal it took the Shiite seats. Few voted: about 10 percent in Beirut and 6.5 percent in Jbeil, where one deputy won with 41 votes. The major Christian currents had no seats.
The Taif deadline for Syrian redeployment passes without a withdrawal.
In September 1992 Lebanese pressing for the partial Syrian pullback that Taif tied to a two-year deadline after the constitutional reforms were told the reforms, deconfessionalisation first, remained unfinished.
Hariri, a billionaire contractor and not a deputy, formed a cabinet of business people and technocrats in late October, centred on reconstruction. Within two weeks the dollar fell from 2,200 to 1,900 pounds. Berri became speaker that month; Jumblatt minister for the displaced.
Syrian withdrawal is made conditional on ending confessionalism.
On 8 December Hrawi declared that deconfessionalisation would rest on consensus, Taif and the Constitution. Khaddam tied any partial Syrian withdrawal to ending confessionalism, and a Damascus summit's communiqué left withdrawal out.
Around 2000 the new district was still mostly deserted (Picard), though the state had given the company unusual property rights. Hariri set it up to rebuild central Beirut; its razing of historic buildings and sweeping expropriations caused fierce dispute. Fisk notes that Hariri owned 10 percent of the shares.
Art and memory
place Bernard Khoury gave B018, built in 1998 where the Karantina massacre took place, the look of a shelter or a coffin; it became the press's favourite example of Beirut's war-themed nightlife. In 2004 a bar called '1975', with sandbags and camouflage netting, opened on Monot Street.
film Ziad Doueiri's West Beyrouth (1998) was a popular success that showed a 'war without blood'; its 1975 bus helped make the Ain al-Remmaneh bus a memory symbol.
A Ministry for the Displaced and a central fund are created.
Laws 190 and 193 created the ministry and a fund to pay for the return of the displaced, most of them Christians forced out of the Mountain. Walid Jumblatt, whose forces had driven out many of them, ran the ministry from 1992 to 1998.
The cabinet adopts a national strategy for the return of the displaced.
Compensation was $5,000 for vacating an illegally occupied home, $12,000 for repairs and $22,500 per heir for rebuilding. Reconciliation between Druze residents and Christian returnees was added as an aim, in designated 'reconciliation villages'.
Israel's 'Operation Accountability' bombards southern Lebanon for a week.
Israel's week-long ground and air offensive on Hezbollah positions killed about 130 Lebanese and no Israelis. It damaged the power grid and sent nearly 300,000 fleeing north. The Lebanese army then deployed there.
LibanCell (a minister's son) and Cellis (the Miqati brothers) ran until 2001; Picard says the market was divided in Damascus, with covert Syrian partners.
The Lebanese Forces party is banned and Samir Geagea jailed.
Tried for the 1990 murder of Dany Chamoun and his family, Geagea lost his amnesty; a death sentence, commuted to life, jailed him eleven years. Picard calls him the one war leader who defied post-war rules. The ban fed the Christian ihbat.
Parliament votes $543 million for the return of the displaced.
Law 333 funded a first, three-year phase in 192 villages, a third of them wholly destroyed, covering 40,000 families or some 200,000 people. Christian return to the southern Mountain was just 17 per cent in 2005.
An Orontes water-sharing agreement leaves 80 percent of the flow to Syria.
Elie Hobeika, then Lebanon's hydroelectric resources minister, signed it. Because its terms damaged Hermel farmers, it was reworked in 1997 and amended in 2001.
Lebanon and Syria sign an agreement on the movement of workers.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians, most without work permits, laboured on the rebuilding. Their number was hotly disputed: the president said 70,000 in August 1995, the joint Supreme Council 203,000 in July 1998, while the press repeated 1.5 million.
The 'Horizon 2000' plan raises reconstruction costs to $17 billion.
By 2000 just 45 percent of the projects were done, growth was nil and public debt about $25 billion against a GDP of $17 billion (Picard); Fisk puts the debt at $24 billion by 2001. The 1995 Horizon 2000 plan had costed rebuilding over 1995-2007 at $17 billion, against a first estimate of $2.2 billion.
A law lets families declare their missing relatives dead.
Law 434 let families have a missing relative declared dead after four years; some did so for legal reasons. Haugbolle argues it ignored the families' real demand, an inquiry and public acknowledgement.
Art and memory
film Jean Chamoun's feature In the Shadows of the City (Tayf al-madina, 2000) draws its character Siham from Wadad Halwani, founder of the families' committee; Elias Khoury's play Memoirs of Job, on the kidnapped, was staged at Masrah al-Medina in 1993-1994.
Only 45 percent voted, 22 percent among Christians. Hezbollah was beaten in Baalbek; in the south, made by Damascus to share a list with Amal, it took just four of the fourteen Shiite seats.
Israel launches 'Operation Grapes of Wrath' against southern Lebanon.
After a boy died in a booby-trap blast and Hezbollah fired rockets at Kiryat Shmona, Israel bombarded the south, killing more than 150 civilians and driving about 400,000 north, often under fire. Solidarity with the displaced crossed community lines.
Israeli shells kill 106 refugees in the UN compound at Qana.
A UN inquiry judged an error unlikely, largely on the strength of a soldier's video of an Israeli drone above the Fijian battalion's base, where some 560 villagers had taken shelter. The shelling lasted seventeen minutes, until 2.25 p.m.; more than half of the dead were children.
Art and memory
memorial Qana Day, 18 April, became a state day of national remembrance in 1997, with gatherings, exhibitions and a permanent museum display at Qana; the victims share a marble-covered grave beside the former UN base.
book Robert Fisk's chapter 'The Massacre' in Pity the Nation is built on survivors' testimony and the UN soldier's video of the drone.
Civic associations hold a day for peace and national unity.
In 1996 young civic associations, APAC and Al-Mouwatin foremost, drove the National Rally for the Support of Lebanon's Survival; at a day for peace on 18 April, their slogans urged civil society to stand united against Israeli attacks.
The 'April Understanding' sets rules for the fighting in the south.
Syria formally, and Hezbollah informally, gained a part in handling the conflict. Brokered by France and the US, it set rules for combatants, monitored by Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the US and France.
