609 news for January, February, June, July, November, December
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February 15, 1983tuesday
The Armenian Community in Lebanon gave a grandiose and emotional official farewell to its Patriarch H.S. Khoren 1st Catholicos of the house of Cilicie, dead at the age of 69.
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February 16, 1983wednesday
February 20, 1983sunday
Even the weather seemed to conspire against Lebanon in the beginning of this year. The storm and the cold raging from the coast up to the peaks of Lebanon claimed several victims. 23 cadavers were discovered and tens of persons were reported missing in the region of Dahr El Baydar. Rescue teams had already succeeded in saving 200 persons; but tens of others, trapped in their cars or buried under the snow where they were attempting to find shelter, were fighting death. The final toll reached 60 deaths and tens of isolated villages.
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February 23, 1983wednesday
June 14, 1983tuesday
While the bombardments took a dangerous turn in the mountain as they reached residential areas, the Chamber of Deputies approved the ratification of the Mai 17 agreement with 62 votes against 2 and 4 abstentions.
\_this day in full the books also date it 15 June 1983 \_on this day
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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.
June 16, 1983thursday
Disguised armed elements fired on the crowd in Tripoli, killing 15 persons. The tensioned lasted several days in the capital of the North.
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June 20, 1983monday
Lebanon lost one of its major poets. Nadia Tueni left behind her pages of pure beauty, eternal words, an immortal poetry, a Lebanon on fire, a tearful family, and inconsolable friends.
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June 27, 1983monday
Violent combats were raging in the region of Mansouriet-Bhamdoun between the Lebanese Forces and the PSP militia. The bombs reached the Northern Metn.
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June 29, 1983wednesday
Philip Habib undertook a new tour in the region. The Lebanese officials informed him in Beirut of their opposition to any partial Israeli withdrawal from the mountain.
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July 5, 1983tuesday
The American Secretary of State arrived in Beirut as part of a new tour. 'Complete withdrawals should be executed according to a defined timetable', declared the US diplomat.
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July 19, 1983tuesday
President Gemayel, accompanied by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, began an eight-day official visit to the United States where he met with President Reagan. The meetings were centered on the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon.
\_this day in full the books also date it 20 July 1983 \_on this day
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Israel's announcement on 20 July of an early pull-out from the Chouf mountains, made while Gemayel was in Washington, alarmed Western ambassadors in Beirut (Fisk).
July 21, 1983thursday
The President of the A.U.B, David Dodge who was kidnapped on the 19th of July 1982, was released. The White House expressed its gratitude to Syria.
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Fisk writes that Dodge was held for months in Iran, though Lebanese reporters put part of his captivity in a Revolutionary Guards house at Zabadani, Syria. Reagan publicly thanked Hafez and Rifaat Assad for their help.
July 23, 1983saturday
The National Salvation Front was born. It was run by Sleiman Frangieh, Rachid Karameh and Walid Joumblatt and was requesting the abrogation of the Mai 17 Israeli-Lebanese agreement.
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Hanf lists Frangieh, Karami, Jumblatt and the left-wing parties as members and says Amal and the Islamic groups did not formally join; Traboulsi counts Amal among the forces that rallied to the Front.
November 2, 1983wednesday
At the Geneva conference, the Mai 17 agreement was the main subject of debates. A Gemayel-Frangieh reconciliation took place.
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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.
November 4, 1983friday
Participants in the Geneva conference asked President Gemayel to undertake an Arab and occidental tour in order to attempt solving the problem of the May 17 agreement.
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November 4, 1983friday
A car bomb exploded next to the Israeli headquarters in Tyr causing 29 deaths and 29 injured. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for this killing attempt.
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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.
November 6, 1983sunday
The situation was dramatic in Tripoli. Inter-Palestinian fights claimed 500 deaths and 875 injured.
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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.
November 17, 1983thursday
The French aviation hit pro-Iranian bases in Baalbeck.
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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.
November 24, 1983thursday
November 30, 1983wednesday
President Gemayel met with the American President at the White House.
\_this day in full the books also date it 1 December 1983 \_on this day
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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.
December 1, 1983thursday
Sheikh Halim Takieddine, Chief of the Druze religious law courts was assassinated; this triggered great emotions in political and religious spheres in Beirut.
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December 4, 1983sunday
The Syrian anti-air defense shut down two American airplanes and a pilot was captured. The positions of the Marines at the Beirut International Airport were bombarded. Eight Marines were killed. The American President was angry: 'We will retaliate if we are attacked again'.
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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.
December 14, 1983wednesday
The American battleship New Jersey entered into action and launched 11 bombs of 1500 kilos each against Syrian positions in Dahr El Baydar.
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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.
December 15, 1983thursday
2500 Lebanese Forces fighters were evacuated from Deir El Kamar.
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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.
December 20, 1983tuesday
Yasser Arafat and 4300 Palestinians left Tripoli aboard Greek ships.
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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.
December 21, 1983wednesday
A truck bomb attack against the frigate post of the French contingent of the Multinational Force in Berjaoui killed one paratrooper and injured 16 others. Another 16 persons were killed and 84 were injured among the Lebanese civilians.
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December 28, 1983wednesday
After three days marked by violent combats in the capital, the Army announced that it was controlling the camps of Sabra and Chatila.
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January 2, 1984monday
The year started like the previous one ended : everyone was talking about a new security plan for the mountain and the Southern suburbs of Beirut. Nevertheless, the fights continued intermittently in these regions between the Army and the Lebanese Forces on one side and the Progressive Socialist Party and Amal on the other.
\_this day in full the books also date it 29 January 1984 \_on this day
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On 29 January the Druze resumed attacking the army at Souk al-Gharb, after Shi'i militia sniping at the army and French troops from mid-January, Hanf's next escalation.
January 4, 1984wednesday
A double Israeli raid in the region of Baalbeck caused tens of victims and buried many persons under the debris. In Beirut, the electric power was severely rationed by the EDL due to damaged installations in the Iqlim El Kharroub. The acts of resistance against the Israeli occupation continued in South Lebanon. Until the end of 1984, not a single day passed without one, two or three killing attempts perpetrated against Israeli troops or the local militias that they created.
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Counts of attacks on the Israeli army vary by source and period: Fisk reports 15 ambushes a week on average by February 1984 and a hundred attacks in December 1984; de Clerck and Malsagne put suicide attacks at about a hundred a month in 1984.
January 9, 1984monday
An anti-French killing attempt at the Résidence des Pins killed a paratrooper and wounded two others. Attacks against US and French troops of the Multinational Force continued until their departure in March.
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January 12, 1984thursday
One person was killed and many others were wounded in Achrafieh in a blind bombardment of residential areas. These bombings continued until July 4, causing thousands of deaths and injuries. Meanwhile, the dollar broke a new record in Beirut, reaching 5.55 LP.
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Sources differ on when the shelling stopped: the original entry has it continuing until the security plan of 4 July, while de Clerck and Malsagne date the systematic bombardment of Christian residential districts from the 17 May 1983 agreement to its abrogation on 5 March 1984.
January 15, 1984sunday
Ships from the sixth US fleet were positioned off Beirut. They were retaliating to the bombing of Marines' headquarters in the capital.
\_this day in full the books also date it 9 January 1984 \_on this day
January 16, 1984monday
Saad Haddad, commander of the Army of Free Lebanon, died from a generalized cancer. He was 47 years old and was buried in his birthplace, Marjeyoun.
\_this day in full the books also date it 13 January 1984 \_on this day
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Sources disagree on the date of Saad Haddad's death: Ménargues gives 13 January 1984; Hanf and Fisk give January 1984; de Clerck and Malsagne give December 1983. No supplied book gives 16 January. Ménargues also gives his birth year as 1937 and his origin as Marjayoun, consistent with the age stated here.
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