Formed in September 1975 through Syria's foreign minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, the National Dialogue Committee of some twenty leaders debated secularism and ending sectarian quotas; Hanf says it broke up empty-handed.

Haugbolle notes widespread protests on National Day in November 1975; Hanf places the war's first demonstration in that month, when gunmen held fire until tens of thousands from East and West Beirut, summoned by television announcer Sharif Akhawi, had gone home.

Begun in late October 1975 (20 October in de Clerck and Malsagne's chronology), the Battle of the Hotels ran for five months, ending when the Holiday Inn fell on 20-22 March 1976. Traboulsi links its launch to Black Saturday in December.

Parliament used the truce to amend Article 73 of the constitution so that Frangieh's successor could be elected early: on 9 April according to Hanf, 10 April according to Yara El Khoury. The truce had coincided with the arrival on 31 March of the US envoy Dean Brown.

De Clerck and Malsagne record three attempts on Raymond Eddé's life, one outside his home, before his voluntary exile in Paris from January 1977; Picard dates the exile to December 1976.

On 2 June Bashir Gemayel, having asked for a secret meeting with Kamal Jumblatt, offered him condolences and information on who had killed her. Traboulsi names her Linda al-Atrash and puts her apartment in East Beirut.

Yara El Khoury dates the start of the final offensive on Jisr al-Basha and Tal al-Za'tar to 22 June 1976, and Hanf's account (Jisr al-Basha stormed eight days after the first assault, on 1 July) points to the same week. The camps had been blockaded since January. Hanf says Chamoun's Tigers and Christian units of the army led the attack, the Kataeb joining later; a joint command of Bashir Gemayel (Kataeb), Dany Chamoun and Nabil Karam (NLP), Fawzi Mahfouz (Tanzim) and Etienne Saqr (Guardians of the Cedar) coordinated it (de Clerck and Malsagne).

From Sarkis's inauguration on 23 September Hanf counts three quiet days, the Semiramis Hotel attack in Damascus and a Syrian move two days after it, placing this offensive at about 28 September. The Palestinian and leftist forces lost the Upper Metn; Traboulsi notes that the Joint Forces' largest concentration, there under Abu Khalid al-Amleh, never engaged the advancing Syrians.

APUR, the Atelier parisien d'urbanisme, drew up this 1977 plan, the earliest of three reconstruction studies made during the war.

The force is usually called the Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) in English.

The bombing came the evening the government chose a new army commander, a change arranged by Boutros, who held foreign affairs and defence, and regarded by the Christian parties as cause for war.

Muslim leaders accused Hanna Saïd, commander since September 1975, of leniency towards the Lebanese Front (Traboulsi: of closeness to the dissident troops in the south). His replacement, Victor Khoury, a Constitutional Bloc sympathiser committed to Christian-Muslim coexistence, ran the army and its rebuilding from March 1977 to December 1982.

Syria, Hanf writes, had lost interest in disarming the Palestinians by autumn 1977, with Sadat's initiative under way, and the deal soon counted for nothing. It had bound the PLO to keep out of a ten-kilometre belt beside the Israeli frontier and, chiefly, to halt raids and shelling across it.

Hanf records that Damascus rejected the Lebanese Front's demands of May 1977: annulment of the Cairo Agreement and dispersal among other Arab states of the 200,000 Palestinians its leaders regarded as illegal entrants.

Israel's Christian allies emerged with a slightly wider strip, spanning nearly the whole frontier from sea to Hermon; Fisk dates the tank withdrawal to 26 September.

De Clerck and Malsagne and Haugbolle list this 1978 play first among Ziad Rahbani's comedies, which satirised the war from West Beirut.

Colonel Jean Germain Salvan was badly hurt in both legs in early May, Fisk writes, when dissident PLO gunmen fired on the Fatah jeep carrying him, killing a French soldier and his Palestinian driver; Arafat called it a crime. Hanf adds that such losses made the French unit much more careful.

The Qaa massacre is dated to the night of 27-28 June (de Clerck and Malsagne) or to 29 June (Hanf); Ras Baalbek and Jdeidet al-Fakiha were also raided. De Clerck and Malsagne blame Syrians in civilian clothes, carrying name lists and guided by local Christian members of the SSNP and the Communist Party, and see the killings as revenge for Ehden. Hanf counts 26 dead, de Clerck and Malsagne 32 to 36. The community's Supreme Council asked that a day of national mourning be held.

The Saudis announced their departure in March 1979 (Ménargues). Picard has Syria's partners, among them Saudis, Sudanese and Emiratis, leaving two years after the 1976 summits; de Clerck and Malsagne call the ADF wholly Syrian from 1979.