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'.

Hanf writes that once Jisr al-Pasha fell on 1 July the Palestinians struck in the north, taking coastal Chekka from Tripoli by way of the Koura, with massacres, looting and arson. A Lebanese Front counter-attack with army tanks reached Tripoli's outskirts.

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.

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.

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.

Hanf writes that Major Haddad's forces fired at Kaukaba on the units sent south in early August, men of the 'vanguard' Syria trusted, and drove them into retreat. Haddad later rebelled openly against the army command, and Israel took over paying his men.

According to de Clerck and Malsagne, the Security Council's call for a ceasefire came on 6 October.

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).

Fisk reads the mutilation of al-Lawzi's body as a warning to the Lebanese press: the flesh of his writing hand had been removed, by knife or acid, and two shots fired into his neck from behind. A shepherd found him, half under snow, in the Aramoun woods on 5 March.