De Clerck and Malsagne and Tegho Bou Nassif date Zahleh's entry into the war to 24 August 1975, when Palestinian fighters planted a bomb in its tourist district, Wadi al-Arayish. In Hanf's account, Zahleh's Christians and Shi'is of its outskirts and nearby villages, helped by Palestinian guerrillas, came to blows late in August after a non-political arcade quarrel. Three Zahleh men were executed at the end of August.

Tal al-Za'tar fell on 12 August 1976 (13 August in Ménargues) after more than 70 assaults. Ménargues and Hanf count a siege of 52-53 days from the final offensive; de Clerck and Malsagne and Traboulsi count six months from the January blockade. An ICRC report cited by de Clerck and Malsagne puts the dead at about 2,500 residents and defenders and up to 800 attackers; many died trying to escape. The Tigers and the Guardians of the Cedar led the last assault, reportedly with Syrian and Israeli officers present. The camp was bulldozed and never rebuilt.

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.

Under the Riyadh decisions of October 1976 all parties were to give up heavy weapons to the Arab Deterrent Force; the Hoss government set a 5 December 1976 deadline (Traboulsi). Fisk reports the militias did not hand them in; Hanf, that the Palestinians moved most of theirs south of the 'red line'.

De Clerck and Malsagne record that Frangieh had quit the Lebanese Front the day before over its ties with Israel. The reconciliation, Hanf notes, made the north a pro-Syrian bloc.

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

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.

Fisk: in the April 1980 fighting at At-Tiri, Haddad's gunmen killed Private Stephen Griffin of the Irish UNIFIL battalion and UN troops killed a militiaman, whose death two other Irish soldiers later paid for. The militia also held the coastal strip between the French unit and Naqoura and shot at helicopters.

De Clerck and Malsagne list Wadi Chahrour and Kfarchima among the National Liberals' bases in Beirut's south-eastern suburbs and end the wave of clashes between Christian militias on 2 July 1980. Ménargues describes near-daily fighting in the second half of June. Bashir Gemayel settled the rivalry by force on 7 July.

Ménargues dates a day of intensive shelling of Zahleh, with about twenty dead, to 6 April.

Ménargues writes that Syrian special forces, landed by helicopter at dawn on 10 April, soon took the heights of Qalaat Aramta and Deir Charfé around Zahleh, leaving its defenders almost encircled.

Ménargues's run of drone losses begins on 14 May, when a Syrian SAM-6 downed an Israeli reconnaissance drone over the Bekaa; more were lost on 19, 22 (two) and 25 May.