93 news for the 5th, 15th of every month
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After more than three days of anguish, with 120 deaths and many injuries, two suspects were handed over to the Justice. Beirut and its surroundings have been the theater of violent clashes between the Phalange Party and Palestinian militias. Also, Zghortiotes and Tripolitans fought in Tripoli. A cease-fire was declared at night and all parties reached an agreement, the execution of which was entrusted to the Internal Security Forces.
\_this day in full the books also date it 16 May 1975 \_on this day
\_what the books add
After several days of fighting (Hanf; four, says Traboulsi), Pierre Gemayel gave up to the police two militiamen implicated in the Ain al-Rummaneh shooting. Early Syrian mediation failed to stop this round, which de Clerck and Malsagne end with a cease-fire on 16 May 1975; no book confirms a truce on 15 April.
\_this day in full the books also date it 8 December 1975, 9 December 1975 \_on this day
\_what the books add
Hanf has the Murabitun, discreetly backed by the Palestinians, going on the offensive against the Kataeb downtown and around the hotels on 8 December and seizing the Phoenicia and St Georges. Traboulsi places an army attempt to retake the two hotels on 9 December.
\_this day in full the books also date it 11 March 1976, 13 March 1976 \_on this day
\_what the books add
The deputies' petition demanding Frangieh's resignation is dated 11 March in Traboulsi's chronology and 13 March by de Clerck and Malsagne; Picard and Traboulsi's chronology count 68 signatures out of 99, Traboulsi's narrative 69. On 15 March Syrian-controlled PLA and Saiqa units halted a march on the Baabda palace by the Lebanese Arab Army and al-Ahdab's followers. Within days Khatib's force grew to a few thousand men and held most of the army's heavy weapons.
A new agreement, called the Damascus Agreement, was likely to be applied in the next 48 hours. Syrian and Resistance leaders had signed it. The agreement stipulated ending hostilities, reactivating the 'Supreme Military Committee', refusing the partition of Lebanon, rejecting American arrangements and plans in Lebanon, continuing the Syrian initiative and refusing the internationalization or the 'Arabization' of the Lebanese crisis. Also, an agreement had been reached stipulating the withdrawal of Syrian troops that entered the Bekaa region on April 10, back to the Masnaa borderline.
\_this day in full the books also date it 9 April 1976, 11 April 1976 \_on this day
\_what the books add
Traboulsi's chronology puts the Syrian-PLO accord to restore order in Beirut on 11 April. Around 9 April Syrian army tanks entered the Bekaa at Anjar, Judaydat Yabus and Bayadir al-Adas (Traboulsi), some forty in all according to Yara El Khoury, as Saiqa fighters set about ending the siege of Zahleh.
\_this day in full the books also date it 9 June 1976 \_on this day
\_what the books add
Picard (2016) dates to 9 June 1976 the Arab League Council resolution, taken in Cairo, that created an Arab peace force. Hanf has some 2,000 Sudanese arriving first, then Libyans; Picard (2002) says Tripoli sent 500 men in June.
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\_what the books add
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.
The Arab Strike Force including mainly Syrians started to advance on various axes leading to the heart of the capital, as well as the Chouf, the Kesrouan, and Jbeil. 8,000 infantrymen and 250 armored vehicles converged towards the districts of Beirut and the front line.
\_this day in full the books also date it 14 November 1976, 16 November 1976 \_on this day
\_what the books add
Hanf puts the entry of about 6,000 Syrian soldiers, in the peace force's green helmets, into East and West Beirut on 14 November. Fisk's report in The Times of 16 November dated their occupation of the whole city to the previous morning, with 6,000 men and hundreds of tanks; the last firing, near the port, ended on 16 November, Fisk recounts.
All sides seemed decided to wait for important regional developments to unfold in order to re-evaluate the situation and define the course of action. The situation was very tense in the South where the Israelis were shelling the Hasbaya region.
\_this day in full the books also date it 12 May 1979 \_on this day
\_what the books add
De Clerck and Malsagne date the start of the fighting between Kataeb and National Liberal Party militias to 12 May 1979, at Furn el-Chebbak; clashes recurred in various places until July 1980.
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\_what the books add
Probably the text Picard lists as President Sarkis's 'Fourteen Points' (March 1980), one of the drafts that fed into the Taif Accord. Traboulsi notes that in that same month an American spokesman called on Lebanon to sign up to the Camp David accords.
\_this day in full \_on this day
\_what the books add
According to Ménargues, Syria's foreign minister Abdel Halim Khaddam brought a five-page paper to Baabda on 5 May. In effect a Lebanese–Syrian accord on institutions, politics, the economy and culture, down to school curricula, it was rejected by the Kataeb leader Pierre Gemayel.
\_this day in full \_on this day
\_what the books add
According to Picard, Hamid Frangieh negotiated Lebanon's financial agreements with France, which she places in 1943 rather than 1948.
\_this day in full the books also date it 16 December 1981 \_on this day
\_what the books add
Ménargues dates the bombing to 16 December. The six-storey embassy at Ramlet al-Baida was destroyed by an explosives-laden car driven by Shiite suicide attackers; a group nobody knew claimed it, and the ambassador's body took four days to find. It followed heavy fighting in West Beirut on 4 December between Amal and pro-Iraqi Baathists, and a Lebanese Forces visit to Baghdad.
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