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.

The bodies of four young Kataeb members were found on 6 December 1975, while Pierre Gemayel was in Damascus; Muslims seized at makeshift checkpoints by the port were killed in reprisal. Accounts place the bodies in the Metn (Hanf), near Tal al-Za'tar (Haugbolle) or outside the electricity company offices (Fisk). De Clerck and Malsagne blame Joseph Saadeh, whose son was among the four. Only Fisk puts Bashir Gemayel in Damascus and cites Phalangist officers saying he ordered the reprisal. The Muslim dead number about 200 (Hanf, Traboulsi, de Clerck and Malsagne) or several dozen (Picard); Fisk gives at least 300 Muslims, and probably as many Christians, in the reprisals.

Hanf notes that in December 1977 Menachem Begin, Israel's prime minister, had excluded any return of the Palestinian refugees in neighbouring countries.

Hanf: clashes among the Christian militias grew more frequent after the partial Syrian withdrawal, which removed Syrian checkpoints on the roads into East Beirut and between Achrafieh and the Christian suburbs and gave the militias one unbroken territory for the first time since 1976.

Ménargues dates the resignation to March 1980, after repeated deadlock between Hoss and Sarkis over the army; Hoss stayed on as caretaker until Shafiq Wazzan's appointment in late October.

De Clerck and Malsagne, drawing on Ronen Bergman, attribute to Ariel Sharon a series of car bombings from October 1981, carried out under the name 'Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners' and aimed chiefly at Palestinians, to provoke retaliation that could justify an invasion. They list no individual attacks, so this bombing cannot be matched to their account.

The invasion, called 'Operation Peace for Galilee', began on Sunday 6 June: Israeli commandos crossed the border at 1.30 a.m. to attack Beaufort castle (Ménargues), and up to 25,000 troops moved along the coast, through Tibnin and across the eastern sector (Fisk). The government declared a limited aim of a 40-kilometre zone, but Defence Minister Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan kept advancing (Hanf). One overview in de Clerck and Malsagne and Picard's chronology give 5 June.

In rue Aussi near Sanayeh park a car bomb exploded among rescuers minutes after Israeli bombs levelled two five-storey blocks, says Robert Fisk's dispatch datelined West Beirut, 5 August; a neighbour put over 100 people, mostly squatters from the camps and the south, beneath the rubble. Arafat had reportedly met there just before.

Robert Fisk recounts that Defence Secretary Weinberger proposed an award for Charles Johnson, a Marine captain who in January 1983 stopped an Israeli tank unit entering the Marine sector off the old Sidon road by climbing onto the lead tank and pointing his pistol at its commander.

The fighting set Fatah dissidents under Abu Musa, Syrian artillery and pro-Syrian Lebanese parties against Arafat's loyalists and the Sunni Tawhid militia. Hanf writes that in early November it took on the character of a Sunni-Alawite civil war, and that Tawhid fighters killed hundreds of communists.

The books describe a joint Amal and PSP (Druze) offensive, not Amal alone; the mainly Shi'i Sixth Brigade went over to Amal. Hanf dates the last Christian soldiers' withdrawal to the east, and so the completed division, to 7 February. De Clerck and Malsagne record the uprising's name, 'the 6 February movement'. About 50,000 Christians moved east, almost half the public radio's 400 staff left their posts, and Télé-Liban split. A later Sunni militia took its name from the date (Hanf).

Ménargues gives two different days for this visit: 24 February in his prologue and 26 February in another passage. Hanf and Fisk both give 29 February. Fisk notes a 21-gun salute; Hanf says Gemayel told Assad he was ready to abrogate the 17 May agreement.

Hanf names Pierre Gemayel's successor at the head of the Kataeb as 'Elie Karami' (Elie Karameh). Ménargues's 'October 1984', placed beside Sheikh Pierre's death, most likely dates Fadi Frem's removal from the Lebanese Forces command, not the death.