385 news for February, June, July, December
with the booksThe year ended with some hope for the Lebanese, following the signature of the tripartite agreement, while the economy was agonizing and hundreds of Lebanese and foreign hostages were living in horrifying daily conditions.
\_this day in full the books also date it 12 March 1985 \_on this day
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Signed in Damascus by Elie Hobeika (Lebanese Forces), Nabih Berri (Amal) and Walid Jumblatt (PSP) under Syrian sponsorship. It provided for Christian-Muslim parity during a transition towards the end of political sectarianism, a stronger prime minister and cabinet, a senate, and 'strategic complementarity' with Syria. It did not end the war: President Gemayel refused it and, in January 1986, Samir Geagea's forces drove Hobeika out of East Beirut. Its provisions were largely taken up in the Taif Agreement of 1989.
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Picard places the wave of killings of Communist and pro-Iraqi Baath leaders in January 1986.
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Hanf records no resignation by Karami in 1986. He says Karami resisted calls to resign that autumn and resigned only on 4 May 1987.
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Hanf says the army units around the camps were backed by a Syrian battalion.
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The labour confederation's 1986 strikes began a run of ever more political protests against the war (Hanf, de Clerck and Malsagne, Traboulsi).
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Typhoid broke out in besieged Chatila during this third camps war.
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Picard puts the toll of the December 1986 Syrian bombardment of Tripoli at more than 100 dead.
\_this day in full the books also date it 8 March 1986 \_on this day
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The Antenne 2 crew was kidnapped on 8 March 1986 (de Clerck and Malsagne), not on 21 June.
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Historians give lower figures for 1986: retail inflation of 162 per cent (Hanf, after the central bank) or a 95 per cent rise in Beirut consumer prices, and a 134 per cent devaluation of the pound (de Clerck and Malsagne).
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De Clerck and Malsagne call 1987's currency crisis the gravest since independence, the pound losing up to 90 percent of its value; on Banque du Liban figures (Hanf), it fell from about 35 to the dollar in 1986 to some 520.
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By late 1986, say de Clerck and Malsagne, Chatila was 90 percent destroyed, yet 500 to 1,000 Palestinians held out inside. In the winter of 1987, Picard writes, many Palestinians in the besieged Beirut camps died of hunger.
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Hanf has the PSP and its leftist allies overrunning Amal's Murr Tower headquarters and taking Hamra after five days of what he calls West Beirut's worst fighting, its destruction on the scale of the 1982 siege. The size of the Syrian force differs by source: 12,000 soldiers plus Special Forces (de Clerck and Malsagne), 8,000 (Quéméner), two brigades (Hanf), the re-formed 85th Brigade (Fisk). The troops entered on 22 February according to most sources (see addition 1987-02-22).
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Karami had announced his resignation on 4 May. Who was responsible is disputed: Hanf (1993) writes that it was never established who planted the bomb in the army helicopter; de Clerck and Malsagne report that it was attributed to Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, and Picard notes that Geagea was later tried for it. Selim al-Hoss, Minister of Education, became acting prime minister; the cabinet never met again and governed by circulated decrees.