Antoine Khuraych headed the Maronite Church from his election on 3 February 1975 (enthronement 9 February) until 1986, styling himself the 'patriarch of dialogue'.

Hanf puts the cabinet's formation at the end of June and its announcement some two weeks before the 15 July confidence vote (83 for, none against, 16 Jumblatt supporters abstaining); Traboulsi's chronology gives 6 July. Neither the Kataeb nor Jumblatt was included. A cease-fire followed, which Traboulsi says was reached with Syrian mediators' help.

Historians describe the Tripoli-Zgharta round as following the Zahleh fighting of late August: kidnappings on both sides, the killing of twelve Muslim bus passengers on the Beirut-Tripoli road, attacks on Christian villages in Akkar and the flight of Christians from Tripoli and Akkar. It ended when the army created a buffer zone between the two towns.

Hanf: Franjieh accepted Karami's condition for sending the army between Tripoli and Zgharta, Ghanem's removal; his replacement, Hanna Said, was a 'politically uncontentious' colonel.

De Clerck and Malsagne date the start of fighting in central Beirut to the night of 17-18 September 1975; Hanf and Traboulsi hold the Kataeb responsible for shelling the old souks. A cease-fire and the setting-up of the National Dialogue Committee followed.

De Clerck and Malsagne date the start of bread rationing to September 1975.

Formed in September 1975 through Syria's foreign minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, the National Dialogue Committee of some twenty leaders debated secularism and ending sectarian quotas; Hanf says it broke up empty-handed.

Haugbolle notes widespread protests on National Day in November 1975; Hanf places the war's first demonstration in that month, when gunmen held fire until tens of thousands from East and West Beirut, summoned by television announcer Sharif Akhawi, had gone home.

Begun in late October 1975 (20 October in de Clerck and Malsagne's chronology), the Battle of the Hotels ran for five months, ending when the Holiday Inn fell on 20-22 March 1976. Traboulsi links its launch to Black Saturday in December.

Cardinal Paolo Bertoli's mission lasted from 9 to 14 November 1975 (de Clerck and Malsagne's chronology). Like the French envoy Couve de Murville, he backed a limited revision of the National Pact.

Hanf dates Lebanese Front forces' capture of the Jisr al-Basha camp to this day; de Clerck and Malsagne give 29 June, Picard August.

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.

Ménargues has William Hawi shot by a Palestinian sniper in June 1976, at the end of the Tal al-Za'tar siege; Traboulsi places it during the siege. Bashir Gemayel succeeded him as Kataeb militia chief.

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.

Ménargues dates the formal unification of the Christian militias under Bashir Gemayel's command to 31 August 1976; Yara El Khoury has it announced to President Frangieh in early September 1976. According to de Clerck and Malsagne, 'Lebanese Forces' was not the official name until 1981, but the unified command was officially founded on 25 March 1976.

Syrian helicopters and armoured limousines carried the 67 deputies to the Park Hotel in Chtaura, in the Syrian-held Bekaa, where 2,000 Syrian soldiers and 40 tanks guarded the ceremony (Fisk). Sarkis used his address to declare that Lebanon itself had invited the Syrian army in (Hanf).

From Sarkis's inauguration on 23 September Hanf counts three quiet days, the Semiramis Hotel attack in Damascus and a Syrian move two days after it, placing this offensive at about 28 September. The Palestinian and leftist forces lost the Upper Metn; Traboulsi notes that the Joint Forces' largest concentration, there under Abu Khalid al-Amleh, never engaged the advancing Syrians.

Hanf writes that Damascus thought the Christian side had won ground enough over the summer, so Syrian guns blocked the Lebanese Front's bid to cross the Beirut-Damascus road and take Aley. Kataeb fighters who had lost comrades at Aley the day before then killed Druze civilians at Salima (de Clerck and Malsagne).

Talks in France with the government and Mitterrand's opposition left Jumblatt sure that France could do nothing in Lebanon against Syrian and US opposition (Traboulsi). His tour, by boat from encircled West Beirut to Cyprus, then Cairo, Algiers and Paris, sought Arab contingents to offset the Syrians.

Ratified by an Arab summit in Cairo on 25 October, the Riyadh decisions required all parties to surrender heavy weapons and the Palestinians to return to the zones granted by the 1969 Cairo Agreement, and created a 30,000-man Arab Deterrent Force under President Sarkis, its largest contingent by far, 25,000-27,000 men, being the Syrian troops already in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia had sent the invitations on 15 October; the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon met the PLO chairman in Riyadh on 16, 17 or 18 October, depending on the historian. The cease-fire's start is dated 16 October (Hanf), 21 October (Traboulsi) or 15 November (de Clerck and Malsagne).

In 1976 Major Saad Haddad's force was known as the Army of Free Lebanon; it took the name South Lebanon Army only in 1985. Agreed through American mediation, the 'red line' kept Syrian and other Arab troops out of the south, where Palestinians and Christian militias kept fighting and Israel backed Haddad (Hanf).

Ménargues names only Sami al-Khatib. Traboulsi confirms that the Arab Deterrent Force's first Lebanese commander was Ahmad al-Hajj, who did not gain Syria's favour and was quickly replaced by al-Khatib.

Fisk: Kahhaleh showed white flags and Hazmiyeh's Christians threw rice and rose water at the crews as at least 20 miles of Syrian tanks, guns and troop carriers came down on Beirut from dawn on 10 November.