111101 entry from the books the books disagree: each version, with the date it gives
1994
From the books
Two mobile telephone companies are licensed.
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.
Patriarch Sfeir denounces the mass presence of Syrian workers.
With Hariri's boom slowing from 1996, newspapers led by Al-Nahar spoke of a million or more Syrians exploiting Lebanon; Patriarch Sfeir echoed this, reckoning foreign workers at a quarter of residents.
Two agreements open trade between Lebanon and Syria.
Duties on agricultural goods were to fall by 50 percent a year from October 1999, and those on industrial goods by 25 percent a year from that January.
Netanyahu's unexpected acceptance of Resolution 425 exposed, in Picard's analysis, a paradox: Lebanon still demanded the resolution officially, but Syria's veto on separate Israeli-Lebanese talks meant it in fact opposed it.
In 1999 the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared, set up by Wadad Halwani in 1982, created a Friends group and brought in activist Paul Ashqar; a war memorial and a 13 April national day joined its calls for an inquiry and family aid. 'Right to Know' dates from 1999; SOLIDA, for Lebanese held in Syria, from 1997.
Students march into the occupied village of Arnoun.
In February 1999 dozens of students led by Communists briefly 'liberated' the Israeli-held village; for Picard, proof that public opinion now carried real weight.
The state recovers the Beiteddine palace from Walid Jumblatt.
Under Syrian pressure Jumblatt let the palace resume its role as presidential summer residence. Lahoud had Kamal Jumblatt's statue and the PSP martyrs' monument removed; Kamal's museum was emptied in 2004.
Lahoud and Hoss stay away from King Hussein's funeral, following Syria.
Assad, whose announced boycott had kept Lahoud and Hoss away from the funeral, went after all, and the two Lebanese leaders were humiliated before their foreign counterparts.
The army crushes an Islamist uprising in Denniyeh.
Special forces moved against Sunni Islamist rebels of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian origin in deprived Denniyeh, helped by Syrian intelligence and equipment.
A former Lebanese Forces intelligence officer apologises publicly to his victims.
Assaad Shaftari, once Hobeika's fellow LF leader, apologised in al-Nahar to all his victims, 'living or dead'. Haugbolle sees a radical break in ex-leaders' silence; few noticed it at first.
Art and memory
book Robert 'Cobra' Hatem's memoir From Israel to Damascus (1999), banned in Lebanon, accused Elie Hobeika and may have set off his political decline.
After the Geneva summit failed, Barak announced that Israel would leave the south entirely, with or without an agreement. Mermier sees the Syrian–Lebanese track of talks with Israel ending there; Picard argues that Damascus lost the international latitude it had enjoyed over Lebanon.
Gebran Tueni's open letter asks Bashar al-Assad to withdraw Syria's troops.
Gebran Tueni printed it on al-Nahar's front page, demanding a withdrawal timetable; Haugbolle links it to a new openness in criticising Syria's presence.
A Syrian dissident writes that Lebanon no longer needs Syria's army.
Riyad al-Turk opened a dossier in al-Nahar's supplement with 'Lebanon no longer needs the Syrian presence': the occupation served Israeli intransigence, and the Geneva failure did not justify it.
Israel pulled out overnight on 23–24 May as the South Lebanon Army, deserting since early May, collapsed. Villagers streamed home, crowds forced open the Khiam jail and several thousand SLA men and relatives left for Israel. The Shebaa Farms, the Kfarshuba hills and Lebanon's part of Ghajar stayed occupied.
