Early in 1983 the Eighth Brigade went into all of Beirut, the east included, under a plan to collect light arms in the city and clear heavy weapons and gunmen from Greater Beirut. The Lebanese Forces resisted, then on 1 March 1983 agreed to return East Beirut and the port's fifth basin to the state.

Counts differ: Hanf has 64 for, 2 against and 4 abstentions among 70 deputies present (40 of 50 Christian and 24 of 41 Muslim members in favour); Traboulsi has 65 for, 2 against and 4 abstentions; Fisk puts the vote on 15 June. Traboulsi says the government formally renounced the agreement on 5 March 1984, Amine Gemayel never having signed it.

Massacres were committed on both sides: Druze fighters killed Christians at Bmaryam, Bhamdoun, Ma'asir al-Chouf and many other villages, and Lebanese Forces fighters killed Druze at Kfarmatta and in villages on their line of retreat. For September to December 1983 de Clerck and Malsagne give more than 1,500 Christians and 207 Druze massacred, 324 PSP and 368 Lebanese Forces fighters dead, and over 163,000 Christians driven from the region. Traboulsi gives 62 villages destroyed, Hanf about sixty.

The Lebanese army had under 24 hours' warning, Fisk writes, before Israeli troops began leaving Aley and the Chouf on the evening of 3 September; by the morning of the 4th they had gone. De Clerck and Malsagne count more than 10,000 Christians from over 60 villages sheltering in Deir el-Qamar.

From 19 September the destroyer John Rodgers, then the cruiser Virginia, shelled Druze positions at Souk el-Gharb. Washington cited US personnel's safety; Fisk and Hanf see entry into the civil war. Only the frigate Bowen had fired before, on 8 September, at a Druze battery hitting the Marine compound.

Geneva's leaders agreed on Lebanon's 'Arab identity'. Fisk saw two reconciliations: Camille Chamoun ended five years of silence with Suleiman Frangieh, and Frangieh's public embrace of Amin Gemayel seemed to close their families' feud.

Fisk puts the Tyre bombing's dead at 60, Israelis and Shin Bet prisoners together, and says some Israeli intelligence officers had known of plans against the building at least eleven months earlier.

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.

Fourteen Super-Étendards from the carrier Clemenceau attacked the Sheikh Abdallah barracks and the Khawam hotel, used by the Revolutionary Guards and Islamic Amal. The barracks had been evacuated after a leak, and most bombs fell on nearby hills; de Clerck and Malsagne count two dead, an Iranian and a Lebanese shepherd. The raid, code-named 'Brochet', was presented as retaliation for the Drakkar bombing.

Hanf writes that in Washington on 1 December the Americans pressed Gemayel to come to terms with the Druze and Shi'is and ruled out any change to the 17 May agreement.

US aircraft struck Syrian positions on 4 December. Fisk counts one plane brought down, with the pilot dead and the co-pilot taken prisoner (Jesse Jackson obtained his release in January 1984); Hanf counts two planes lost. Hanf also places, without a date, the deaths of eight Marines from Syrian artillery fire in the same episode.

The New Jersey fired shells, not bombs: one-ton 16-inch rounds, according to Fisk. De Clerck and Malsagne say its rounds often missed, by up to 9,000 metres, and killed civilians; Christians called it 'New Jersa', a new shame.

On 15 December, after 102 days, the siege of Deir el-Qamar ended. Israel brokered the departure of Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces and most refugees for East Beirut; the town was left mainly to its elderly.

Escorted by five French warships, Greek ships including the Odysseus carried Arafat and some 4,000 men from Tripoli to Tunis, the PLO's second evacuation from Lebanon after Beirut in 1982.