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.

Historians date the start of Operation Litani to 14 March (de Clerck and Malsagne, Traboulsi, Quéméner; de Clerck's chronology gives 15 March) and its end to 21 March. Up to 25,000 Israeli soldiers and 120 tanks took part (de Clerck and Malsagne). Estimates of the dead range from about 300 Palestinian fighters (de Clerck and Malsagne) to about 2,000 people, mostly civilians (Fisk; de Clerck and Malsagne; Picard). Estimates of the displaced range from 150,000 (Hanf's refugee table) and more than 200,000 (de Clerck and Malsagne, Picard) to 285,000 (Lebanese government figure cited by Fisk). On 15 March Israeli aircraft bombed the Palestinian camps of Beirut, Tyre and Damour.

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.

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 lists the participants as Syrian foreign minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, the Arab League's representative and the Saudi and Kuwaiti ambassadors, Ali Chaër and Abdel Hamid Bouayajane. That day a general strike against the Syrian presence shut down the Christian regions.

The 59-year-old ambassador was shot in his locked car at about 1.55 p.m., some 60 metres from a Syrian checkpoint (Malsagne), while heading home near the Résidence des Pins. Malsagne blames a pro-Syrian Shiite commando; the next ambassador, Paul-Marc Henry, saw a botched kidnapping ordered by Iranian intelligence. France was then moving closer to the PLO.

Hanf describes the Shi'i Amal movement fighting the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front and small communist organisations in West Beirut in the first months of 1982.

Abu Nidal's group, an enemy of the PLO leadership, had shot Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador in London, on the night of 3 June; Israel answered with the raids. Robert Fisk notes that the bombs hit a PLO arms dump in the old stadium near Fakhani and a Palestinian children's hospital by Sabra; Palestinian sources gave 50 dead, Lebanese officials 210 civilians. The original's 'Fakhani attack' is the Israeli raid of 17 July 1981.

A US-backed Security Council resolution demanded that West Beirut's water and power be restored; Lebanon's minister of hydroelectric resources called the Israeli step 'inhuman'. Fisk dates the cut to early on 5 July, when Israel switched off electricity and water and barred food, having reduced power since the third week of June. Ménargues describes a further cut on 26 July.

Fisk: on 4 August Israeli tanks crossed at the museum and 13 Israeli soldiers died by shellfire near the airport. Israeli shells and bombs hit the Wadi Abu Jamil synagogue, refugees in Sanayeh park, the prime minister's office, hotels, newspaper offices and hospitals.

Bashir Gemayel was killed at about 4 p.m. during his weekly visit to the Kataeb office in Ashrafieh, nine days before taking office. The bomb, about 35 kilos of explosive, had been placed two days earlier in the flat above by Habib Tanios Chartouni, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, arrested on 16 September (Ménargues). Prime Minister Wazzan announced the death at midnight. Hanf counts 26 dead.

Early in 1983 the Eighth Brigade went into all of Beirut, the east included, under a plan to collect light arms in the city and clear heavy weapons and gunmen from Greater Beirut. The Lebanese Forces resisted, then on 1 March 1983 agreed to return East Beirut and the port's fifth basin to the state.

De Clerck and Malsagne say the deputies were told of the text at a closed session on 15 May; Prime Minister Wazzan approved it and sent it to the president, and that month 70 of the 91 deputies still in office backed the government.

Counts differ: Hanf has 64 for, 2 against and 4 abstentions among 70 deputies present (40 of 50 Christian and 24 of 41 Muslim members in favour); Traboulsi has 65 for, 2 against and 4 abstentions; Fisk puts the vote on 15 June. Traboulsi says the government formally renounced the agreement on 5 March 1984, Amine Gemayel never having signed it.

The Lebanese army had under 24 hours' warning, Fisk writes, before Israeli troops began leaving Aley and the Chouf on the evening of 3 September; by the morning of the 4th they had gone. De Clerck and Malsagne count more than 10,000 Christians from over 60 villages sheltering in Deir el-Qamar.