57 original entries, 29 added from the books, 65 days.
Wednesday, 16 March 1977
111101 entry in the original chronology
Kamal Joumblatt was assassinated
He was leaving Moukhtara when he and two other passengers were killed. An ambush was set up not far from an Arab Strike Force control post. This assassination aroused a huge wave of disapproval. A call for a strike was immediately issued. The country was in mourning. Chief of the Lebanese left wing, leader of the Druze community, author of several political books, coming from a famous family in the Chouf, Kamal Joumblatt was born in 1917 in Moukhtara, with essentially an eclectic spirit. After he graduated from the Law school in Saint Joseph University in Beirut, he went into politics very young. In 1946 he was elected for the first time Deputy of the Chouf in the Parliament and three years later he was appointed Minister of Economy and Agriculture. In 1949, he founded the Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party (PSP). Three months before his assassination, he had given up politics.
What the books addJumblatt was ambushed near a Syrian checkpoint of the Arab Deterrent Force; Fisk places it on the mountain road near Baaqlin. Most historians give 16 March 1977 (Traboulsi, de Clerck and Malsagne, the Confluences authors, and Hanf on one page); Hanf elsewhere and Ménargues give 17 March, which Ménargues ties to the burial. His son Walid took over, and Christians were killed in reprisal in Chouf villages. Hanf writes that most politicians, Muslims above all, took the murder as a warning against defying Syria openly, and that Jumblatt had attacked the Syrian presence in speech and print, in Lebanon and abroad.
Art and memory- book Dima de Clerck reads Kamal and Walid Jumblatt as shapers of Druze memory around family grievances: the defeat after 1860 and Bashir Jumblatt's fall in 1825.
Added from the books range
Christians are killed in Chouf villages in reprisal for Kamal Jumblatt's murder.
Many of the Christians killed in revenge for Kamal Jumblatt's assassination were Jumblatt loyalists, communists or SSNP sympathisers. Some died at home in Chouf villages; on mountain roads, clergy and civilians were stopped in their cars and shot; in West Beirut districts held by the leftist Joint Forces, Christians were abducted and executed. Walid Jumblatt said he had tried to halt the killings, and some Druze warned Christian neighbours or diverted school buses.
Sources differ: Death toll: 177 (de Clerck and Malsagne) against 130 to 180 (Hanf). Displaced: 25,000 after these killings (Hanf) against more than 25,000 for all the 1977 Chouf massacres including Brih (de Clerck and Malsagne, p. 159). Date: 16 March (de Clerck and Malsagne) against 17 March (Ménargues). Hanf (p. 275) calls it an 'isolated incident'.
Art and memory- testimony Mountain Christians use two words for the massacres of 1976, 1977 and 1983: majazir, plain 'massacre', and madhabih, a cruder term evoking throat-cutting and killing at close range.
1977: day not established
summer 1977
Added from the books
The Mossad installs a secret radio link for Bashir Gemayel in Achrafieh.
In summer 1977 the Mossad gave Bashir Gemayel a radio set wired to a telex for contact with Israel. Housed in a flat behind the Kataeb office in Achrafieh, it took its name, 'Bureau 04', from its internal phone extension. The same year the Christian zone gained a separate communications link to Cyprus.
autumn 1977
Added from the books
Tyre is run as a leftist 'People's Republic'.
A committee of Baathists, communists and Nasserists, funded mostly by Iraq, ran Tyre, where leftist and Palestinian militias still controlled 55,000 people, many of them refugees: Israel's 'red line' kept Syria out. Residents privately complained of extortion and wanted the army, which never came.
1977
Added from the books
The Lebanese University splits into eastern, western and regional branches.
The Lebanese University split: its original seat stayed in West Beirut, an East Beirut section spread its faculties through the northern and eastern suburbs, and regional branches opened in Tripoli, Sidon and Zahle. Many public bodies, the central bank among them (Hamra and Jounieh), likewise worked from several sites.
1977
Added from the books
Bashir Gemayel extends his control within the Kataeb.
Amin Gemayel's Metn stronghold was besieged in 1977 by his younger brother Bashir, who won over the Phalange's Kesrouan section on his way to sole command of the Christian militias.
January 1977
Added from the books
Raymond Eddé leaves for exile in Paris.
In January 1977 National Bloc leader Raymond Eddé, who had survived several attempts on his life, went into voluntary exile in Paris. He opposed militia rule and the 'Syrian mandate over Lebanon' and sought a strong state for all faiths.
Sources differ: De Clerck and Malsagne count three attempts; Hanf says 'a number' and attributes them to the Kataeb and Saiqa.
February 1977
Added from the books
Syrian troops pull out of Nabatiyeh after an Israeli warning.
In February 1977 the Syrians pulled back a small Arab force unit posted near Nabatiyeh, about ten kilometres from the Israeli border, after Israel had passed on its objection through American channels. Nabatiyeh then became a Palestinian stronghold.
Sources differ: Hanf dates the Syrian entry to January 1977; Fisk dates the withdrawal to February 1977. Both can be true.
February 1977
Added from the books
Prime Minister Hoss and President Sarkis fall out over the army.
President Sarkis and Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss fell out. Hoss stood accused of blocking the army's rebuilding by making it a sectarian issue; he had resisted purging the 1976 rebels.
March 1977
Added from the books
Bashir Gemayel meets the Israelis secretly at sea off Jounieh.
Ménargues records a secret night-time rendezvous on an Israeli patrol boat off Jounieh in March 1977, during which Antoine Najm, who had joined Bashir Gemayel after leaving the Kataeb, fell into the sea; Bashir then nicknamed him 'Neptune'.
April 1977
Added from the books
A wave of senior civil service appointments tests the new government.
Civil servants were called back to their posts and many directors-general were appointed or transferred; the press treated the reshuffle as a test of how much agreement the new government commanded. According to Pierre France, no later wartime reshuffle came close to it.
May 1977
Added from the books
The Lebanese Front demands the end of the Cairo Agreement.
Syria refused the Lebanese Front leaders' conditions for any national reconciliation talks: annulment of the Cairo Agreement and dispersal among other Arab countries of some 200,000 Palestinians they saw as illegal residents.
Sources differ: Original entry 144 reports the same demand after the Ehden meeting of August 1977.
May 1977
Added from the books
Clash at Deir Billa between Syrian troops and Phalangist militiamen.
About twenty Syrian soldiers died in May 1977 at Deir Billa, a Christian village in North Lebanon, fighting militiamen under Samir Geagea whom Bashir had reinforced. The Kataeb reacted badly, and Karim Pakradouni, advocate of close ties with Syria, led an opposition to Bashir.
May 1977
Added from the books
Begin comes to power in Israel and pledges to protect Lebanon's Christians.
Menachem Begin, prime minister after the Likud's election win, authorised the Mossad to draw closer to Bashir Gemayel; days after taking office he had publicly invoked Israel's 'historic' duty to save Lebanon's Christians from genocide. Hanf and Traboulsi tie the growing Israeli pressure on Lebanon to him.
Sources differ: Ménargues dates the election to May 1977; Hanf says 'the summer of 1977'.
July 1977
Added from the books
Nabatiyeh is shelled daily from Marjayoun.
Only three or four hundred of Nabatiyeh's 10,000 people remained in July 1977, when Palestinians held the town and the Christian militia in Marjayoun had shelled it day and night for weeks, often with Israeli munitions. Fisk notes that shelling killed 20 people across the south in June.
September 1977
Added from the books
Syrian tanks guard the first post-war hashish crop in the Bekaa.
Syrian Special Forces tanks and the farmers' own anti-aircraft guns protected the fields around Baalbek where Lebanon's first post-war hashish crop came in. Cannabis covered about 10,000 hectares in 1977, four times the pre-war area, and poppy fields were spreading.
late November 1977
Added from the books
West Beirut strikes and demonstrates against Sadat's visit.
All of West Beirut went on strike and marched against President Sadat's trip to Jerusalem. The authors liken this political protest to the pro-Palestinian demonstrations of the early 1970s.
December 1977
Added from the books
Begin rules out any return of Palestinian refugees (context).
In December, before talks with Egypt had begun, Israel's prime minister declared that Palestinian refugees in neighbouring countries would not return.
December 1977
Added from the books
President Sarkis has a Sûreté officer close to Bashir Gemayel sent abroad.
Commissioner Zahi Boustani, whose work for Bashir Gemayel was becoming known, was made an example of in December 1977: Sarkis, angered by Bashir's attacks and opposed to officials helping the militia, had General Security chief Farouk Abillama send him into 'exile'. Boustani went to France; Bashir grew angrier still.
