The day began with shootings near the church in Ain al-Rummaneh, where Pierre Gemayel was attending a consecration; his bodyguard Joseph Bou Assi was killed. In the early afternoon Kataeb militiamen fired on a bus returning to Tal al-Za'tar from a rally of the Arab Liberation Front. Most historians count 27 dead (Hanf, Fisk, de Clerck and Malsagne: 27 of 35 passengers); Traboulsi gives 21 and Ménargues 31. According to de Clerck and Malsagne the bus carried Palestinians and Lebanese in equal numbers, all men. Fighting spread that evening across the suburbs of Beirut.

Bishop Yuhanna Bassul's diary records 500 shells hitting Zahleh on the night of 22 December, with some 15,000 fedayeen gathered in the plain; at his appeal the army's Maghawir commando regiment came to help. Hanf writes that 3,000 men of the PLA's Yarmouk Brigade had entered from Syria on 20 December and besieged the town, which Syrian positions also shelled.

Traboulsi, de Clerck and Malsagne, and Yara El Khoury date the Syrian-mediated cease-fire to 23 January. PLA and Saiqa units attacked Zgharta in the north but were repulsed, and Zahleh, besieged, held out.

Ménargues has William Hawi shot by a Palestinian sniper in June 1976, at the end of the Tal al-Za'tar siege; Traboulsi places it during the siege. Bashir Gemayel succeeded him as Kataeb militia chief.

Ménargues dates the formal unification of the Christian militias under Bashir Gemayel's command to 31 August 1976; Yara El Khoury has it announced to President Frangieh in early September 1976. According to de Clerck and Malsagne, 'Lebanese Forces' was not the official name until 1981, but the unified command was officially founded on 25 March 1976.

In 1976 Major Saad Haddad's force was known as the Army of Free Lebanon; it took the name South Lebanon Army only in 1985. Agreed through American mediation, the 'red line' kept Syrian and other Arab troops out of the south, where Palestinians and Christian militias kept fighting and Israel backed Haddad (Hanf).

Its unprecedented powers spanned planning, funding and running reconstruction. It replaced the Planning Ministry in 1977; Picard calls it the economy's 'superministry'.

Fisk dates the arrival in Tyre of UNIFIL's first unit, Colonel Jean Germain Salvan's French paratroopers, to 23 March. That morning, at the nearby Hassan Borro barracks, Palestinians and Lebanese officers nearly opened fire over the handover.

Historians date the Ehden killings to 13 June (de Clerck and Malsagne) or 14 June (Hanf). A unit of some 200 men (Traboulsi) led by Samir Geagea attacked the Frangieh residence; besides Tony Frangieh, his wife and their three-year-old daughter, about thirty relatives and supporters were killed. The Phalange presented the raid as retaliation for the killing of their local leader Jud al-Bayeh in early June; Bashir Gemayel denied ordering the killing of the family. The raid also turned on control of the Chekka cement works. Syrian troops then occupied Ehden and much of the north.

According to de Clerck and Malsagne, a Mossad agent detonated a bomb in a Volkswagen as Salameh's Chevrolet passed. His wife, Georgina Rizk, had been Lebanon's first Miss Universe.

Hanf writes that West Beirut's Sunnis sided with the Shi'is on National Day, which became a protest against every foreign armed presence; cedar flags hung all over the city.

Hanf places it in early 1980. Palestine Liberation Army units under Syrian or pro-Syrian command took over the Syrian posts in and near Beirut, while the Syrian troops, bar one garrison, quit the city's dividing line and the coast road to the south and redeployed to the heights above the capital.

Officially no killer was named, but al-Lawzi's murder was widely blamed on his criticism of Syrian rule (Fisk; Picard). Fisk: he was seized near a Syrian army checkpoint heading for the airport.

Hanf: early in 1980 Amal fought the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front in Beirut's suburbs while Fatah tried to mediate, as relations between Shi'is and Palestinians grew worse; the fighting later reached the south.

In Ménargues's account the appointment came on 25 October, after Damascus had vetoed Takieddine Solh and put up three candidates including Hoss; by picking none of them Sarkis disregarded Syrian advice for the first time in his presidency.