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'.

Historians disagree on 1976: Haugbolle ranks it among the war's largest emigration waves, while de Clerck and Malsagne see many returning that year after nearly 400,000 Lebanese had left by 1975. Haugbolle notes that no official figures exist.

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.

Historians describe the Syrian pull-back from Beirut in 1980 as a redeployment to the Bekaa and to mountain positions overlooking the capital, with a garrison kept in West Beirut (Hanf). The Lebanese army could not replace the departing Arab Deterrent Force everywhere (Picard).

Dates differ. De Clerck and Malsagne's chronology has the Lebanese Forces controlling East Beirut from 31 October 1980. Ménargues puts the LF's 48-hour assault on Ain al-Remmaneh, held by Elias Hannouche's Chamounists, ten days after the 10 November car bombs, around 20 November 1980.

In Ménargues's account the Saudi and Kuwaiti foreign ministers proposed Syria–Lebanese Forces talks after seeing Khaddam in Beirut on 3 September. Next day at Baabda, Bashir Gemayel accepted the opening of crossing points. The Vigilance Committee's evening statement reserved arms imports to legal forces and set up a body to police the coast and ports; Bashir and the Lebanese Front rejected it.

The 59-year-old ambassador was shot in his locked car at about 1.55 p.m., some 60 metres from a Syrian checkpoint (Malsagne), while heading home near the Résidence des Pins. Malsagne blames a pro-Syrian Shiite commando; the next ambassador, Paul-Marc Henry, saw a botched kidnapping ordered by Iranian intelligence. France was then moving closer to the PLO.

Hanf describes the Shi'i Amal movement fighting the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front and small communist organisations in West Beirut in the first months of 1982.

The Lebanese army had under 24 hours' warning, Fisk writes, before Israeli troops began leaving Aley and the Chouf on the evening of 3 September; by the morning of the 4th they had gone. De Clerck and Malsagne count more than 10,000 Christians from over 60 villages sheltering in Deir el-Qamar.

US aircraft struck Syrian positions on 4 December. Fisk counts one plane brought down, with the pilot dead and the co-pilot taken prisoner (Jesse Jackson obtained his release in January 1984); Hanf counts two planes lost. Hanf also places, without a date, the deaths of eight Marines from Syrian artillery fire in the same episode.

On 29 January the Druze resumed attacking the army at Souk al-Gharb, after Shi'i militia sniping at the army and French troops from mid-January, Hanf's next escalation.

Counts of attacks on the Israeli army vary by source and period: Fisk reports 15 ambushes a week on average by February 1984 and a hundred attacks in December 1984; de Clerck and Malsagne put suicide attacks at about a hundred a month in 1984.

Annual figures: the pound fell to about 16 to the dollar in 1985 against 6.5 in 1984, with retail inflation of about 70 per cent (Hanf, citing Abou Rjaily and Labaki); de Clerck and Malsagne put the 1985 devaluation at 150 per cent. Hanf notes that rumours of large PLO deposits briefly strengthened the pound in early 1985.

Syrian troops entered Zahleh on 7 September after the Lebanese Forces' withdrawal (Hanf).

The meetings produced no agreement (Hanf).