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

De Clerck and Malsagne and Traboulsi date the Sidon fishermen's protest to 26 February 1975. The marchers opposed Protein, a fishing company whose board included Camille Chamoun; their leader, Maarouf Saad, was shot and died some days later. Clashes between the army and armed groups in Sidon and Tyre followed at the start of March: de Clerck and Malsagne give 6 soldiers and 11 civilians killed and an army pull-out from Tyre, Hanf 5 soldiers and 11 civilians. The Kataeb staged a pro-army demonstration in Beirut. Hanf puts the fishermen's protest in March, and Picard describes the Sidon marchers as Palestinian militants.

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.

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 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.

Bishop Yuhanna Bassul's diary records 500 shells hitting Zahleh on the night of 22 December, with some 15,000 fedayeen gathered in the plain; at his appeal the army's Maghawir commando regiment came to help. Hanf writes that 3,000 men of the PLA's Yarmouk Brigade had entered from Syria on 20 December and besieged the town, which Syrian positions also shelled.

On 11 March Brigadier-General Aziz al-Ahdab, Beirut garrison commander (retired, says Traboulsi), seized the television station, named himself interim military governor and called for Frangieh's resignation and an early election. Few troops stood behind him and Syria opposed him: on 15 March PLA and Saiqa units under Syrian control blocked his men and Khatib's Lebanese Arab Army on their way to Baabda. Backed by Chamoun, Gemayel and President Assad, Frangieh refused to go.

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.

Mourabitoun and Palestinian fighters, backed by Lebanese Arab Army artillery, took the 24-storey Holiday Inn after a fight waged floor by floor, day and night, from 20 to 22 March 1976 (Traboulsi dates the fall to 22 March). The Kataeb withdrew to the Fattal building near the port. The five-month Battle of the Hotels was over, and Beirut was split along the Green Line.

Hanf traces the line that went on dividing the city along the Damascus road and across Martyrs Square to the harbour. It was set once the Kataeb, losing the Holiday Inn, had no positions left in West Beirut.

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.

Its members were technocrats and businessmen; the one politician, Fouad Boutros, held both foreign affairs and defence (Traboulsi). Early on, at Syria's behest, it brought in press censorship (Hanf, Fisk); Traboulsi also mentions an order for militias to surrender their arms.

APUR, the Atelier parisien d'urbanisme, drew up this 1977 plan, the earliest of three reconstruction studies made during the war.

Jumblatt was ambushed near a Syrian checkpoint of the Arab Deterrent Force; Fisk places it on the mountain road near Baaqlin. Most historians give 16 March 1977 (Traboulsi, de Clerck and Malsagne, the Confluences authors, and Hanf on one page); Hanf elsewhere and Ménargues give 17 March, which Ménargues ties to the burial. His son Walid took over, and Christians were killed in reprisal in Chouf villages. Hanf writes that most politicians, Muslims above all, took the murder as a warning against defying Syria openly, and that Jumblatt had attacked the Syrian presence in speech and print, in Lebanon and abroad.

The force is usually called the Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) in English.

The bombing came the evening the government chose a new army commander, a change arranged by Boutros, who held foreign affairs and defence, and regarded by the Christian parties as cause for war.

Muslim leaders accused Hanna Saïd, commander since September 1975, of leniency towards the Lebanese Front (Traboulsi: of closeness to the dissident troops in the south). His replacement, Victor Khoury, a Constitutional Bloc sympathiser committed to Christian-Muslim coexistence, ran the army and its rebuilding from March 1977 to December 1982.