Bishop Yuhanna Bassul's diary records 500 shells hitting Zahleh on the night of 22 December, with some 15,000 fedayeen gathered in the plain; at his appeal the army's Maghawir commando regiment came to help. Hanf writes that 3,000 men of the PLA's Yarmouk Brigade had entered from Syria on 20 December and besieged the town, which Syrian positions also shelled.

Traboulsi, de Clerck and Malsagne, and Yara El Khoury date the Syrian-mediated cease-fire to 23 January. PLA and Saiqa units attacked Zgharta in the north but were repulsed, and Zahleh, besieged, held out.

Ménargues dates the formal unification of the Christian militias under Bashir Gemayel's command to 31 August 1976; Yara El Khoury has it announced to President Frangieh in early September 1976. According to de Clerck and Malsagne, 'Lebanese Forces' was not the official name until 1981, but the unified command was officially founded on 25 March 1976.

In 1976 Major Saad Haddad's force was known as the Army of Free Lebanon; it took the name South Lebanon Army only in 1985. Agreed through American mediation, the 'red line' kept Syrian and other Arab troops out of the south, where Palestinians and Christian militias kept fighting and Israel backed Haddad (Hanf).

Fisk dates the arrival in Tyre of UNIFIL's first unit, Colonel Jean Germain Salvan's French paratroopers, to 23 March. That morning, at the nearby Hassan Borro barracks, Palestinians and Lebanese officers nearly opened fire over the handover.

According to de Clerck and Malsagne, a Mossad agent detonated a bomb in a Volkswagen as Salameh's Chevrolet passed. His wife, Georgina Rizk, had been Lebanon's first Miss Universe.

Hanf writes that West Beirut's Sunnis sided with the Shi'is on National Day, which became a protest against every foreign armed presence; cedar flags hung all over the city.

Hanf places it in early 1980. Palestine Liberation Army units under Syrian or pro-Syrian command took over the Syrian posts in and near Beirut, while the Syrian troops, bar one garrison, quit the city's dividing line and the coast road to the south and redeployed to the heights above the capital.

In Ménargues's account the appointment came on 25 October, after Damascus had vetoed Takieddine Solh and put up three candidates including Hoss; by picking none of them Sarkis disregarded Syrian advice for the first time in his presidency.

According to Ménargues, Bashir Gemayel answered the collapse of a cease-fire on 22 April, which left 140 dead or wounded in Beirut within hours, by having the international airport shelled. On 11 May US ambassador John Gunther Dean urged the Lebanese Forces, via Alfred Madi, to let it reopen; that evening they dropped their objection.

Hanf: Gemayel had undertaken at Geneva to negotiate a new agreement with Israel and had not; for that, Jumblatt and Berri demanded he resign at the end of January. Traboulsi cites Jumblatt, early in 1984, vowing to fight on until Gemayel's government went. Neither confirms the day, 22 January.

Hanf dates the Mourabitoun's final destruction and Qulaylat's exile to April 1985, when Amal and the PSP combined against them.

Hanf (p. 570) says Gemayel signed the decrees at 23.45, after an ultimatum from Aoun and Geagea, and that the cabinet had six officers from six communities. Traboulsi's postscript dates the end of the term to October 1988, and Picard (p. 155) and Quéméner to August 1988; the other sources agree on 22 September.

The dates differ: Picard ends the 'war of liberation' on 22 September; de Clerck and Malsagne say the ceasefire took effect on 23 September. Hanf dates the troika's new plan to 13 September (de Clerck and Malsagne say 17 September). Aoun accepted it, urging the deputies to insist on a timetable for Syrian withdrawal.

Counts differ: Hanf records 56 votes in favour plus 2 conditional (a total of 58) of 62 deputies present, with 4 abstentions; de Clerck and Malsagne say 59 signed. Traboulsi calls the text the Charter (Document) of National Understanding. Hanf says the vote came on the 23rd day of the conclave.

Moawad had been president for seventeen days. Hanf puts the dead at fourteen, including the president; de Clerck and Malsagne say he died with 23 other people. Fisk describes a remote-controlled charge of 250 kg of explosives concealed in a disused shop, and watched bulldozers clear the rubble within hours.