January 1975 saw heavy Israeli attacks on the South. Israeli forces razed Kfar Chouba, a border village, about a week after 7 January (Hanf), and Palestinian commandos shelled army positions in Tyre during border clashes with the Lebanese army (de Clerck and Malsagne). The figures for 3 January come from contemporary press reports.

Antoine Khuraych headed the Maronite Church from his election on 3 February 1975 (enthronement 9 February) until 1986, styling himself the 'patriarch of dialogue'.

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.

Dates differ between historians: 16 January (Ménargues), 18 January (de Clerck and Malsagne; consistent with Fisk), 19 January (Hanf), 20 or 22 January (Traboulsi). Maslakh, next door, fell at the same time. Most of the district's people were Shi'is, living alongside Palestinians, Kurds and Armenian Lebanese. Haugbolle estimates 150-500 dead, de Clerck and Malsagne 600-1,000; some 30,000 people were driven out to West Beirut and the southern suburbs.

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.

Barely a tenth of American and British residents accepted the evacuation, Fisk writes. The British went by road, the PLO escorting them through West Beirut and a Libyan officer on to the Syrian lines; a day later a US landing craft took evacuees off from a PLO-guarded bathing club on the Corniche.

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.

Talks in France with the government and Mitterrand's opposition left Jumblatt sure that France could do nothing in Lebanon against Syrian and US opposition (Traboulsi). His tour, by boat from encircled West Beirut to Cyprus, then Cairo, Algiers and Paris, sought Arab contingents to offset the Syrians.

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

Vance's airport motorcade skirted Sabra and Chatila after a Beirut visit, dated by Fisk to autumn 1977, to hear the government's views on the Palestinians' future.

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.

De Clerck and Malsagne and Picard agree that Haddad declared his 'State of Free Lebanon' at Marjayoun on 18 April 1979, in reaction to the army being sent towards the UNIFIL area under the March 1979 defence law; de Clerck and Malsagne put its size at 250 square kilometres and call it entirely reliant on Israel. Hanf has Haddad's troops stopping the battalion; de Clerck and Malsagne and Picard, Israeli aircraft bombing it; Fisk, Israel letting its militia shell it. Traboulsi dates Haddad's break to his Army of Free Lebanon of June 1976, Ménargues to a secession at the end of 1977. Hanf adds that once Haddad had lost his rank and been dismissed in disgrace, Israel paid his men.