Hanf has the Murabitun, discreetly backed by the Palestinians, going on the offensive against the Kataeb downtown and around the hotels on 8 December and seizing the Phoenicia and St Georges. Traboulsi places an army attempt to retake the two hotels on 9 December.

Ménargues dates the bombing to 16 December. The six-storey embassy at Ramlet al-Baida was destroyed by an explosives-laden car driven by Shiite suicide attackers; a group nobody knew claimed it, and the ambassador's body took four days to find. It followed heavy fighting in West Beirut on 4 December between Amal and pro-Iraqi Baathists, and a Lebanese Forces visit to Baghdad.

On 15 December, after 102 days, the siege of Deir el-Qamar ended. Israel brokered the departure of Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces and most refugees for East Beirut; the town was left mainly to its elderly.

Hanf dates the army's advance into the Sidon region to 9 January 1985, as Israel began pulling back. Some of the 15 December deployment may have been north of the Awali, which he does not detail. The southern strike is not in the books.

Hanf: Prince Saud al-Faisal's two meetings with Assad yielded only marginal concessions, 108 seats instead of 128 and a phrase on each country's sovereignty. Christian deputies, led by Joseph Skaff of Zahle, sought firmer withdrawal terms, but the troika had settled the Syrian clauses with Damascus in advance; they were not negotiable.

Mitterrand called asylum for Aoun 'a matter of honour' and France granted it, but Beirut refused to let him go; he stayed in the French embassy until taken to France on 29 August 1991.