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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

De Clerck and Malsagne have Iranian clerics and activists settling in the Bekaa, and then in Tyre, from 1980, before 500 to 2,000 Revolutionary Guards entered Lebanon in June 1982.

De Clerck and Malsagne list Amal's opponents once Nabih Berri led it, from 1980: the Communist Party, the Communist Action Organisation, the Iraqi Baath, Fatah and the Army of Arab Lebanon. Traboulsi notes frequent fighting between Amal and the Palestinian groups and National Movement up to June 1982.

Ménargues: the attack was claimed by telephone to Reuters by an unheard-of 'Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners'. Investigators found the discarded tube of a US-made LAW anti-tank rocket, a type Israel says it passed to the Christian militias in 1976. Bashir Gemayel's own inquiry blamed the National Liberal (Ahrar) leader Elias Hannouche, whose aim was to discredit the Lebanese Forces.

The National Liberal holdouts in Ain el-Remmaneh were led by Elias Hannouche ('Hannache'). Hanf and de Clerck and Malsagne place the end of their autonomy in late October 1980 (de Clerck: Lebanese Forces in control of East Beirut on 31 October); Ménargues dates the decisive Lebanese Forces assault to the second half of November. There may have been two rounds.

Historians date the battle of Zahleh from this day, when Lebanese Forces fighters beat off a Syrian attack on the town and a siege of some 90 days began. Ménargues says Syrian heavy guns killed 50 and wounded over 200 that day in Zahleh and the Christian zone north of Beirut.

De Clerck and Malsagne, drawing on Ronen Bergman, attribute to Ariel Sharon a series of car bombings from October 1981, carried out under the name 'Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners' and aimed chiefly at Palestinians, to provoke retaliation that could justify an invasion. They list no individual attacks, so this bombing cannot be matched to their account.

Bashir Gemayel, back from Saudi Arabia on 2 July, said the PLO did not mean to leave. Two hours earlier, at the Alexandre Hotel, Sharon had told reporters, Robert Fisk among them, that Israel's only aim was to destroy the PLO and it wanted not 'one square inch' of Lebanon.