Geneva's leaders agreed on Lebanon's 'Arab identity'. Fisk saw two reconciliations: Camille Chamoun ended five years of silence with Suleiman Frangieh, and Frangieh's public embrace of Amin Gemayel seemed to close their families' feud.

The fighting set Fatah dissidents under Abu Musa, Syrian artillery and pro-Syrian Lebanese parties against Arafat's loyalists and the Sunni Tawhid militia. Hanf writes that in early November it took on the character of a Sunni-Alawite civil war, and that Tawhid fighters killed hundreds of communists.

The books describe a joint Amal and PSP (Druze) offensive, not Amal alone; the mainly Shi'i Sixth Brigade went over to Amal. Hanf dates the last Christian soldiers' withdrawal to the east, and so the completed division, to 7 February. De Clerck and Malsagne record the uprising's name, 'the 6 February movement'. About 50,000 Christians moved east, almost half the public radio's 400 staff left their posts, and Télé-Liban split. A later Sunni militia took its name from the date (Hanf).

The meetings produced no agreement (Hanf).

Fisk's account puts the kidnapping on 28 May 1985.

De Clerck and Malsagne call 1987's currency crisis the gravest since independence, the pound losing up to 90 percent of its value; on Banque du Liban figures (Hanf), it fell from about 35 to the dollar in 1986 to some 520.

According to Hanf and Fisk, the embassy closed after demonstrations by Aoun's supporters. A first youth protest at the embassy, against Western 'silence', took place in April 1989.