Hanf cites the observers' heavy casualties and a ceasefire nobody respected, which left them nothing to do.

Before resigning, Karami had seen the cabinet reconvene in April to deal with the economic crisis, after months in which the Muslim ministers' boycott of Gemayel had kept it from meeting. Hanf treats his call to open the presidency to every community as the start of the contest for the 1988 presidential election.

Jean-Charles Marchiani, the secret negotiator, later confirmed a Franco-Iranian bargain, suspected when the hostages were freed four days before the presidential run-off (de Clerck and Malsagne, p. 411).

Hanf (p. 248, note 116) confirms that the Kataeb militia of the Metn kept some autonomy until October 1988; the Lebanese Forces took over Gemayel's institutions, such as the Maison du Futur and the daily Le Réveil (p. 613, note 4).

De Clerck and Malsagne do not mention the ceremony, but they record a rally outside the Lebanese embassy in Paris that day: more than 2,000 people, brought together by Frédérique Deniau under the slogan 'We are all Lebanese', among them Jean d'Ormesson, Françoise Giroud, Abbé Pierre, André Glucksmann and Claude Mauriac.

Hanf dates Aoun's dissolution, by Decree 420, to 4 November, with elections set for January 1990; Traboulsi places it in September 1989. Raymond Eddé held the decree constitutional; Georges Vedel, the French jurist consulted by Speaker Husseini, found that an interim government could not dissolve parliament.

The books place the renewed Amal-Hezbollah fighting of December 1989 in Iqlim al-Touffah, east of Sidon. Hanf says it started after Hezbollah fighters from the Bekaa crossed the zone held by the South Lebanon Army.