91 entries on 84 dates · the books disagree on 22
dates 1–60 of 84 next
January 2000
January 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
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.
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February 2000
Thursday, 10 February 2000
After the war · From the books
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.
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February 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
Israeli night raids hit Lebanon again.
The raids came as Hezbollah's pressure on the occupied zone was tied to the stalled Syrian-Israeli talks.
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March 2000
Sunday, 5 March 2000
After the war · From the books
Israel's cabinet decides on a unilateral withdrawal from the south.
Barak's plan set 7 July 2000 for leaving the 'security zone'. Beirut, deferring to a stalled Damascus, prepared nothing.
Sources differ: Cabinet decision on 5 March (Abirached); Picard places Barak's announcement in April.
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Thursday, 23 March 2000
After the war · From the books
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.
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March 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
The Clinton-Assad summit in Geneva fails.
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.
Sources differ: February (Picard 2002), March (Picard 2016; 33 jours p. 210) or April 2000 (33 jours p. 176). March has the most support.
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April 2000
Saturday, 29 April 2000
After the war · From the books
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.
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May 2000
Wednesday, 24 May 2000
After the war · From the books
Israel ends its occupation of southern Lebanon.
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.
Sources differ: 24 May (Abirached, Tarraf; Picard: night of 23–24) or 25 May (de Clerck and Malsagne, book and article). Occupation lasted 18 years (from 1982, de Clerck and Malsagne) or 22 years (from 1978, Abirached).
Other date in the books: Thursday, 25 May 2000
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May 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
Raymond Eddé dies in exile in Paris.
Picard names the National Bloc leader, who died in Paris, among the real opposition chiefs who remained in exile.
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June 2000
Friday, 16 June 2000
After the war · From the books
The UN Secretary-General confirms the Israeli withdrawal.
Kofi Annan confirmed Israel had left; Lebanon rejected the UN's 'Blue Line' where it departed from the 1923 border.
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June 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
Hafez al-Assad dies; his son Bashar succeeds him.
Hafez al-Assad's death in June 2000, a month after Israel quit the south, briefly allowed freer criticism of Syria's presence in Lebanon.
Sources differ: June 2000 (Haugbolle, Picard 2016 ch. IV), May 2000 (Picard 2016 ch. V) or 10 June 2001 (Picard 2002, clearly a misprint for 2000).
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July 2000
Friday, 28 July 2000
After the war · From the books
UN peacekeepers deploy along the Blue Line.
A phone call with Bashar al-Assad reportedly preceded Lahoud's approval of the deployment. The Lebanese army was kept away from the border.
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Sunday, 30 July 2000
After the war · From the books
Lahoud says the army's role in the south will be defined 'in due course'.
Lahoud's Army Day speech left the army's role undefined, so no national strategy emerged; the government called Hezbollah's continuing fight a 'national struggle'.
Sources differ: 30 July (Picard 2002) or 29 July (Picard 2016).
Other date in the books: Saturday, 29 July 2000
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Monday, 31 July 2000
After the war · From the books
Former president Amine Gemayel returns after eight years in Paris.
Afterwards, with President Lahoud's backing, he secured the Bikfaya seat for his son Pierre. In August he and Walid Jumblatt signed a 'pact of honour', opening the way to Christian-Druze reconciliation.
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July 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
President Lahoud declares all the missing of the war dead.
President Émile Lahoud declared all the missing dead, officially blaming no one; families had pressed for inquiries. That year a commission on the missing identified three Beirut mass graves: Mar Mitr (Ashrafieh), the Martyrs' cemetery (Horsh Beirut) and the British cemetery (Tahwita).
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August 2000
Wednesday, 9 August 2000
After the war · From the books
A thousand soldiers and police enter the former occupied zone.
International pressure, tying reconstruction aid to the state's presence, brought five hundred troops and five hundred internal security men. Hezbollah remained the real authority in the area.
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Sunday, 27 August 2000
After the war · From the books range
Parliamentary elections bring Hariri back in triumph.
The electoral law, imposed by Syria's Ghazi Kanaan, favoured his ally Hariri, whose lists swept Beirut's nineteen seats; Amal and Hezbollah took all twenty-three in the south. Government-backed candidates faced unexpectedly strong pro-independence rivals.
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October 2000
Sunday, 1 October 2000
After the war · From the books
Bashar al-Assad declares the Shebaa Farms Lebanese.
Bashar al-Assad's declaration at the Arab League in Cairo that the farms were Lebanese legitimised continued resistance to Israel; Syria never confirmed it in writing to Lebanon or the UN.
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Thursday, 26 October 2000
After the war · From the books
Rafiq Hariri forms a new thirty-member cabinet.
Hariri regained the premiership after the 2000 elections, but the hopes that had greeted him in 1992 were gone.
Sources differ: September 2000 (Quéméner) against October (Picard, Abirached).
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October 2000: day not established
After the war · From the books
Waves of arrests hit anti-Syrian Christian activists.
An SSNP deputy made pointed threats against Walid Jumblatt, who had spoken of a 'readjustment' in ties with Syria, and soldiers detained dozens of militants in successive waves: the state's answer around the confidence vote for Hariri's new cabinet.
After the war · From the books
The Maronite bishops openly criticise Syria.
The bishops' open criticism of Syria echoed protests by Aoun's followers and ex-Lebanese Forces members; Picard sees clergy now contesting Syria's armed presence.
Sources differ: Picard dates the bishops' communiqué to October 2000.
After the war · From the books
Hezbollah captures three Israeli soldiers near the Shebaa Farms.
Citing Shebaa, Hezbollah kept up sporadic attacks; Israel replied with artillery and bombing.
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November 2000
Tuesday, 14 November 2000
After the war · From the books
The UN Security Council asks Lebanon to take control of the evacuated south.
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January 2002
January 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Elie Hobeika is killed by a car bomb near Beirut.
The former Lebanese Forces intelligence chief, widely held responsible for Sabra and Shatila and a minister after the war, died shortly before he was to testify in the Belgian case against Ariel Sharon.
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February 2002
Thursday, 14 February 2002
After the war · From the books range
Assaad Shaftari's war confessions appear in al-Hayat.
In three interviews with Hazim al-Amin, Hobeika's former aide described his militia years, including orders to execute captives, and called for the truth to be told so that the next generation might forgive.
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March 2002
Sunday, 31 March 2002
After the war · From the books
Israel threatens to strike Syria over its support for Hezbollah.
On 14 April, two weeks after that threat, Ariel Sharon charged Syria and Iran with supporting Hezbollah's attacks.
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April 2002
Wednesday, 3 April 2002
After the war · From the books
The government announces Syrian troop withdrawals from parts of Mount Lebanon.
The move was presented as an application of the Taif Agreement.
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May 2002
Saturday, 25 May 2002
After the war · From the books
On Liberation Day Nasrallah declares Hezbollah's support for the Palestinian intifada.
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August 2002
August 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Sharon calls a Lebanese water pump on the Wazzani a cause for war.
A war over the Council of the South's plan to supply some fifty villages from the Wazzani, a Hasbani tributary, was averted by American, Russian and European mediation.
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November 2002
November 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Before-and-after photographs of downtown go on show in Place de l'Étoile.
Haugbolle calls the book version, 'Beirut's Memory', propaganda: a Solidere-linked bank published it in the name of Hariri's photographer Ayman Traoui. On site, paired 1990 and 2002 views ringed the clock tower.
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December 2002
December 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Rustom Ghazaleh replaces Ghazi Kanaan as Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon.
Kanaan had ruled from Anjar since 1982, vetting candidates and shaping the 2000 electoral map; his recall signalled Bashar al-Assad's tighter grip on Lebanon. Ghazaleh, his replacement, was implicated in Al-Madina bank's 2003 collapse.
Sources differ: Farewell ceremony 9 October 2002 versus replacement in December 2002.
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2002
summer 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Much of rebuilt downtown Beirut is inaugurated as 'Beirut reborn'.
Posters ('Le Liban vit'), full-page press advertisements and television spots hailed the completion, with no reference to the war.
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February 2003
April 2003
Sunday, 13 April 2003
After the war · From the books
'Remember, so as not to return': a campaign for a national day of memory.
In al-Safir leading politicians openly backed remembering the war for the first time. On 13 April hundreds gathered in Martyrs' Square, handing out flowers and collecting signatures for a national memory day and a memorial; earlier, the Association Mémoire pour l'Avenir and the families' Committee had screened war documentaries unseen in Lebanon at Masrah al-Medina.
Art and memory- place Architect Mona El-Hallak came upon the Barakat building, above the old demarcation line at Sodeco, in 1996, and from 1997 led APSAD's campaign to save it. In 2003 the municipality expropriated it for $3 million for Beit Beirut.
- film Films Haugbolle cites on postwar amnesia include Ghassan Salhab's Beyrouth Fantôme (1999) and Terra Incognita (2002); the novel Ya Salam (1999) by Najwa Barakat follows former militiamen in peacetime.
Other date in the books: Tuesday, 8 April 2003
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April 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
A replica of the 1975 bus becomes a memory installation in Beirut.
Hassan Saouli deliberately kept graphic images out: to mark 28 years since 13 April, he parked a bus of the 1975 model on a central Beirut street, with videos and texts on guilt and forgiveness inside.
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May 2003
Tuesday, 27 May 2003
After the war · From the books
Ghassan Tueni answers a Syrian general's threats against the Lebanese.
In al-Nahar Ghassan Tueni addressed Bashar al-Assad as an equal, protesting at threats against the Lebanese by General Bahjat Sleiman, Syria's intelligence chief.
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June 2003
June 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
Nada Sahnaoui's installation 'Atadhakkar' (I remember) opens in Martyrs' Square.
Sahnaoui set readers' memories of prewar downtown on 360 newspaper stacks, leaving a few stacks bare for what had been erased.
Sources differ: Opening in June 2003 (p. 132); the photograph is dated July 2003.
Art and memory- artwork Nada Sahnaoui's earlier work 'Statistics' listed war casualty figures from the press; Haugbolle's note points to 111101's Artworks section.
After the war · From the books
A Kataeb memorial in Ashrafieh is pulled down for luxury flats.
A 1986 site for local fighters, it had lost its point once many of their families left in 1989-90, the mukhtar said.
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September 2003
September 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
Soldiers fire on Hezbollah members in a poster fight at Jiba.
In Jiba, Hezbollah members objected to Amal's pictures of Imam Musa Sadr; in the ensuing brawl the army fired on Hezbollah, a first in over ten years: one dead, two wounded.
After the war · From the books
A by-election sets off a poster war in Gemmayzeh.
In Jummayza's September 2003 by-election, posters of Aoun's Hikmat Dib, the jailed Geagea and Bashir Gemayel were torn or mocked daily: Christian memory, divided.
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October 2003
Monday, 27 October 2003
After the war · From the books
Hezbollah attacks Israeli positions at Shebaa; Israel raids near villages.
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November 2003
November 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
A public hearing on 'understanding the war' turns into a shouting match.
Two women broke into the Association Mémoire pour l'Avenir's hearing for students and war witnesses: one abused Samir Kassir for attacking Syria; a mother blamed a former Kataeb editor for her son's killing.
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December 2003
December 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
The US Congress passes the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act.
It demanded a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and allowed for sanctions, partly applied from spring 2004.
Sources differ: Passed in November (Haugbolle) or December 2003 (Picard, 33 jours); sanctions from April (Picard) or May 2004 (33 jours).
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January 2005
Monday, 17 January 2005
After the war · From the books
A bulldozer is attacked at Shebaa; Israel strikes Hezbollah positions in the south.
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February 2005
Monday, 14 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri is assassinated in Beirut.
Shortly after midday a huge bomb struck Rafic Hariri's convoy outside the Saint-Georges hotel on the Beirut seafront, killing him and others travelling with him. Lebanese politics then divided into two blocs, which took their names from the rallies of 8 and 14 March.
Sources differ: Death toll differs: 22 dead (de Clerck & Malsagne, p. 461 and p. 577); Hariri 'and eight companions' (Abirached, p. 243, although the same chronology's 7 April entry speaks of Hariri 'and twenty-two other persons'); 18 dead (Quéméner). The counts may cover different groups (convoy only, or all victims, including those who died later).
Art and memory- book Sune Haugbolle's War and Memory in Lebanon begins with the Hariri bombing of 14 February 2005, which he takes as the end of postwar Lebanon and which brought the war back to many Lebanese minds.
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Tuesday, 15 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The UN Security Council calls for Syria's withdrawal.
Quéméner's calendar has the Security Council demanding Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon on 15 February 2005, the day after Hariri's killing.
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Wednesday, 16 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Hariri is buried in downtown Beirut; his grave becomes a place of pilgrimage.
Hariri was buried on 16 February in central Beirut, beside his unfinished mosque. His family had refused a state funeral and barred President Émile Lahoud. Crowds swelled the cortege; for days people visited the tent over the grave, where a roadside cloth gathered signatures for 'the truth'.
Art and memory- place Hariri's grave in the city centre became a place of pilgrimage, and the 'freedom fence' beside it, along his mosque, gathered layer upon layer of graffiti in Arabic, French and English; in November 2006 the site was sealed off with barbed wire.
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Monday, 21 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
First large opposition demonstration near the site of the bombing.
Mass rallies followed every Monday in February and March. On 21 February, a week after the attack, a large, orderly crowd met near the Saint-Georges hotel with national flags only. Young activists camped on Martyrs' Square below Hariri's grave.
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Friday, 25 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
A UN fact-finding mission arrives in Beirut.
Irish police officer Peter Fitzgerald arrived in Beirut with a UN fact-finding team, whose job was to give a first account of how Hariri was killed.
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Monday, 28 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Prime Minister Omar Karami resigns under pressure from the street.
Omar Karami's government resigned as demonstrations grew in downtown Beirut.
Sources differ: Two contributors to the same volume differ: Abirached's chronology dates Karami's resignation to 28 February, Khayat's chapter to 27 February. Abirached's dated chronology is the more precise of the two.
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March 2005
Saturday, 5 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
In a speech to Syria's parliament, Bashar al-Assad promises to pull his army out of Lebanon.
Under pressure from abroad, including from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Bashar al-Assad told the Syrian parliament that his troops would leave Lebanon; Syria, he insisted, was not abandoning its responsibilities towards its 'brothers and friends'.
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Tuesday, 8 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Hezbollah and Amal rally in central Beirut to thank Syria.
Hezbollah and Amal brought a huge crowd into central Beirut to thank Syria and to reject Western interference. Addressing it, Hassan Nasrallah credited Syria with keeping Lebanon stable and warned against foreign meddling. The pro-Syrian '8 March' camp took its name from the day.
Sources differ: Crowd size: about 800,000 (Abirached; Khayat) against 400,000 (Quéméner). De Clerck & Malsagne call it the first mass demonstration, whereas Khayat places it the day after the opposition's third Monday rally.
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Thursday, 10 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
President Lahoud names Omar Karami Prime Minister again.
Ten days after his resignation, Omar Karami was again designated to form a government.
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Monday, 14 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
About a million people gather on Martyrs' Square: the '14 March' demonstration.
The opposition answered with a still larger rally of nearly a million people; Sunnis came out in force beside Christians and Druze, waving Lebanese flags. They demanded the truth about Hariri's assassination, an end to the joint Syrian-Lebanese security apparatus and Syria's withdrawal. The '14 March' coalition is named after the day.
Art and memory- photograph Al-Nahar showed Wissam Moussa's photograph of the 14 March 2005 marchers next to Hariri's grave for two months that spring: placards of dead leaders, each said to have been killed by Syria.
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Friday, 25 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The Fitzgerald mission hands its report to the UN in New York.
Peter Fitzgerald's UN team delivered its findings on the Hariri assassination in New York.
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late March 2005: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
A series of bombs begins in Christian areas.
Bombs started going off in Christian areas shortly after the 14 March rally. The first did only material damage, but the attacks escalated until they were aimed at killing people in the anti-Syrian camp.
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March 2005: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
Syrian workers flee Lebanon amid reprisals.
After Hariri's killing, sporadic attacks by Lebanese, which a Daily Star report cited by Picard says left several dozen victims, drove unskilled Syrian farm and building workers out. Syrian unemployment, already 20 per cent officially, rose sharply as they went home.
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April 2005
Sunday, 3 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Syria agrees with the UN envoy to withdraw by 30 April at the latest.
Syrian troops were to be out of Lebanon by 30 April at the latest under a deal Bashar al-Assad struck with the UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.
Since 2005 · From the books range
Unity Week festival in downtown Beirut (3-13 April).
Bahia Hariri drove Unity Week, which filled central Beirut with events from 3 to 13 April as the war reached its thirtieth anniversary; war-wounded wheelchair users joined some forty thousand others in its unity marathon. Haugbolle notes that it left out Amal, Hezbollah and smaller pro-Syrian groups, and had a commercial streak.
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Thursday, 7 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
UN Resolution 1595 creates an international commission to investigate Hariri's killing.
Detlev Mehlis, a German magistrate, was appointed to chair the new UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC), which Resolution 1595 set up to investigate the 14 February killing of Hariri and twenty-two others.
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Wednesday, 13 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Thirtieth anniversary of the war: a march along the former Green Line.
On the evening of 13 April a procession walked the old Green Line from the National Museum to Martyrs' Square. At the Museum, a banner apologising for all that was done in the war hung for people to sign. Unity Week press advertisements set a grey, crossed-out 1975 beside a brightly graffitied 2005.
Art and memory- artwork Al-Nahar's Unity Week advertisements of 13 April 2005 set a struck-through grey 1975 beside a bright 2005 ('History did not repeat itself'), marking for Haugbolle the passage from war to new unity.
- testimony Haugbolle cites a conversation with Naji Zahar, the artist behind 111101, held in Beirut on 14 April 2005, the day after the anniversary; Haugbolle's book also discusses Zahar's memory meetings and online database (printed p. 101).
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Friday, 15 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Najib Mikati is named Prime Minister.
Najib Mikati was appointed prime minister at the head of a more neutral team charged with running the May–June elections; Omar Karami had been unable to form a cabinet.
Since 2005 · From the books
UMAM shows Jocelyne Saab's 1975 film of a Lebanon about to go to war.
Away from Unity Week, UMAM Documentation and Research showed Jocelyne Saab's 1975 film on Lebanese society as war was about to break out.
Art and memory- film Lokman Slim and Monika Borgmann, UMAM's founders, filmed Massaker (2005) from 2001 to 2004 out of interviews with ex-militiamen who had joined in the Sabra and Shatila killings; Haugbolle spoke with the pair in Beirut on 30 April 2005.
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Monday, 25 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
General Security chief Jamil al-Sayyed resigns.
On 25 April Jamil al-Sayyed stepped down as director general of General Security.
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Tuesday, 26 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The last Syrian troops and intelligence officers leave Lebanon.
Syria's remaining troops and intelligence personnel left Lebanon, ending twenty-nine years of Syrian military presence. By Picard's count, some 14,000 soldiers went home peacefully before the end of April.
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dates 1–60 of 84 next
