Traboulsi counts this among the early-1975 protests, a southern general strike and Beirut demonstrations, over the Palestinian presence and the south's defence.

In a heated sitting of parliament Rashid al-Solh resigned, blaming the Kataeb for the fighting. His refusal to deploy the army had led the Kataeb ministers to leave the cabinet, and other Christian ministers had followed them.

Hanf: Franjieh accepted Karami's condition for sending the army between Tripoli and Zgharta, Ghanem's removal; his replacement, Hanna Said, was a 'politically uncontentious' colonel.

Cardinal Paolo Bertoli's mission lasted from 9 to 14 November 1975 (de Clerck and Malsagne's chronology). Like the French envoy Couve de Murville, he backed a limited revision of the National Pact.

De Clerck and Malsagne record that the besiegers executed some twenty Damour residents on this day, a first massacre a week after the siege began on 9 January. Whether these are the deaths reported 'at the entry of Damour' is not established.

Historians date Lieutenant Ahmad al-Khatib's breakaway to 21 January (de Clerck and Malsagne, in the Bekaa) or 22 January (Julie Tegho Bou Nassif, from the diary of the Greek Catholic bishop of Zahleh); Hanf places the mutiny in the south. About 300-400 Muslim soldiers followed him at first. The entry of 30 January may record a later step.

De Clerck and Malsagne note that Edouard Saab was Le Monde's correspondent too; a sniper shot him dead while he crossed the demarcation line.

Fisk reports that the bodies of Ambassador Francis Meloy, his economic counsellor Robert Waring and their Lebanese driver, abducted near the Museum crossing, were found that evening at Ramlet al-Baida, and that Arafat, once sure of the three Palestinians responsible, sent them to Tyre. De Clerck and Malsagne judge that the murders ended American efforts at a settlement through the Lebanese parties.

Later estimates for the 'two-year war' are below the figures quoted here. Published death tolls, de Clerck and Malsagne note, run from 15,000 to 40,000, and the displaced numbered at least 200,000. In The Times of 16 November 1976 Fisk reported almost 40,000 dead.

Jumblatt 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.

Avoiding the risk of hitting their own men, and leaving positions hard to hold, were the main aims of the Syrian pull-back in Hanf's reading: a tactical move.

Musa al-Sadr travelled to Libya on 25 August (de Clerck and Malsagne) at the invitation of the Libyan government (Ménargues) and was never seen again; Hanf dates the disappearance to September. Beirut papers speculated about the Shah's secret police or Libyan intelligence. Fisk writes that he was almost certainly killed in Libya. The loss mobilised the Shi'a and later strengthened Amal.

Bashir Gemayel's men fought a bloody battle with army units sent, at Pierre Gemayel's and Camille Chamoun's request, to separate the Kataeb and National Liberal militias, at war since 12 May. De Clerck and Malsagne call it the first serious armed clash between the army and a Lebanese militia, dating it once to 14 June and once to 18 June.

See the note on the entry of 25 January 1980.

Fisk: violating the UN's agreements with Israel, Haddad's militia set up positions inside the UNIFIL zone in spring 1980, beside At-Tiri, near Beit Yahoun and at ruined Rashaf, where it parked a Sherman tank reached by a road built with Israeli help.

Hanf sees the Iran–Iraq war of September 1980 as already being fought earlier in Beirut's suburbs: Amal and the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front clashed there despite repeated ceasefires, and the fighting spread south, where a dozen villages were contested until mid-1982. De Clerck and Malsagne list the Iraqi Baath among Amal's adversaries.

Ménargues counts 10 dead and 62 wounded from two car bombs in Achrafieh, Bashir Gemayel's power base.