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.

The bodies of four young Kataeb members were found on 6 December 1975, while Pierre Gemayel was in Damascus; Muslims seized at makeshift checkpoints by the port were killed in reprisal. Accounts place the bodies in the Metn (Hanf), near Tal al-Za'tar (Haugbolle) or outside the electricity company offices (Fisk). De Clerck and Malsagne blame Joseph Saadeh, whose son was among the four. Only Fisk puts Bashir Gemayel in Damascus and cites Phalangist officers saying he ordered the reprisal. The Muslim dead number about 200 (Hanf, Traboulsi, de Clerck and Malsagne) or several dozen (Picard); Fisk gives at least 300 Muslims, and probably as many Christians, in the reprisals.

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.

Hanf notes that in December 1977 Menachem Begin, Israel's prime minister, had excluded any return of the Palestinian refugees in neighbouring countries.

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.

Hanf: clashes among the Christian militias grew more frequent after the partial Syrian withdrawal, which removed Syrian checkpoints on the roads into East Beirut and between Achrafieh and the Christian suburbs and gave the militias one unbroken territory for the first time since 1976.

Ménargues dates the resignation to March 1980, after repeated deadlock between Hoss and Sarkis over the army; Hoss stayed on as caretaker until Shafiq Wazzan's appointment in late October.

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.

The invasion, called 'Operation Peace for Galilee', began on Sunday 6 June: Israeli commandos crossed the border at 1.30 a.m. to attack Beaufort castle (Ménargues), and up to 25,000 troops moved along the coast, through Tibnin and across the eastern sector (Fisk). The government declared a limited aim of a 40-kilometre zone, but Defence Minister Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan kept advancing (Hanf). One overview in de Clerck and Malsagne and Picard's chronology give 5 June.

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.

In rue Aussi near Sanayeh park a car bomb exploded among rescuers minutes after Israeli bombs levelled two five-storey blocks, says Robert Fisk's dispatch datelined West Beirut, 5 August; a neighbour put over 100 people, mostly squatters from the camps and the south, beneath the rubble. Arafat had reportedly met there just before.