519 news for January, February, June, September, December
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December 5, 1986friday
Abou Melhem died. The great TV comedian, whose real name was Adib Haddad, became famous for playing, for many years, the character of a villager famous for his common sense. The grandfather of all the Lebanese had disappeared.
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December 13, 1986saturday
The Camps Car continued. After ten hours of violent combats, the Chatila camp was 90% destroyed and tens of deaths were reported.
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Typhoid broke out in besieged Chatila during this third camps war.
December 19, 1986friday
Violent combats opposed in Tripoli the Syrian Army to Islamist militiamen. The fights made 12 dead and 35 injuries. The Syrian Army launched an Islamists hunting at the end of which one of the major leaders of the Islamic Unification Movement was arrested.
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Picard puts the toll of the December 1986 Syrian bombardment of Tripoli at more than 100 dead.
December 24, 1986wednesday
Aurel Cornea, one of the Antenne 2 journalists kidnapped on June 21, was released by the Organization of Revolutionary Justice.
\_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.
December 26, 1986friday
The dollar crossed the 80 Lebanese Pounds threshold. It continued its rise to reach the fateful three digit numbers. According to statistics, consumer products had increased by 204% in a year and the Lebanese Pound had depreciated by 365%.
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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).
January 2, 1987friday
The Minister of Labor Selim El Hoss signed a decree raising the minimum wage to 3,200 LBP. This decision was a timid ray of light in the heavy economic sky.
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Historians describe the collapse of real wages behind such decrees: against 1974, the statutory minimum wage kept 13 percent of its buying power at the end of 1986 (Hanf, after Abou Rjaily and Labaki).
January 5, 1987monday
While the Camps War raged between Amal and the Popular Palestinian Liberation Front, the Salam mission, aiming at reconciling Presidents Assad and Gemayel, was resumed.
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The third 'war of the camps' had begun in the south at the end of September 1986; fighting resumed in the Beirut camps in December. By early January 1987 it had cost over 500 dead and 2,000 wounded, by a French diplomatic estimate. The books describe Amal's adversaries as PLO fighters, mostly loyal to Arafat.
January 6, 1987tuesday
The Cassir decrees caused a fast increase in the price of fuel. Starting this day, 20 liters of gas were sold at 190 LBP, while the jar of butane was sold at 100 LBP.
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January 7, 1987wednesday
President Camille Chamoun escaped by miracle from a killing attempt. A car bomb exploded on the River cornice when his convoy was passing by. 4 persons were killed and 37 others were wounded. The President was injured in his arm.
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Hanf mentions the failed attempt on Chamoun's life early in 1987 and notes that he died in August of that year.
January 8, 1987thursday
Artillery duels between the two sectors of the capital on one hand and the bombing of the Beirut Airport on the other, raised the tension again.
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January 13, 1987tuesday
The kidnapping, in West Beirut, of Roger Auque, a French journalist, raised the number of French nationals who disappeared in Lebanon to 18.
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Counts differ: Hanf, after Abou Rjaily and Labaki (figures to late 1987), counts about fifty foreigners kidnapped in Lebanon, including twenty Americans and nine Frenchmen. The figure of 18 French nationals may include people who were not kidnapped; its basis is not known.
January 24, 1987saturday
While there were still no news about West German nationals Cordes and Schmidt, three Americans and one Indian holding a US passport were kidnapped at the Beirut University College campus, in Koraytem in Ras Beirut.
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January 28, 1987wednesday
Assad and Gemayel met for 55 minutes in Kuwait during a pan-Islamic conference to put an end to a disagreement that lasted one year. Besides, Washington decided to prohibit US nationals from travelling to Lebanon.
\_this day in full the books also date it 13 January 1986 \_on this day
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Traboulsi dates the break between the two presidents to their meeting of 13-14 January 1986, when Gemayel rejected the Syrian-sponsored Tripartite Accord.
January 29, 1987thursday
Mounir Abou-Fadel, Vice-Speaker of the National Assembly, died from a heart attack at the American hospital where he was admitted four days earlier.
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February 1, 1987sunday
The MEA suspended its flights therefore causing a de facto closing of the Beirut International Airport, while the few companies that were still flying into the airport (Soviet, Czech, and Bulgarian) decided to cancel their flights.
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February 6, 1987friday
The Lebanese Pound recorded a historic decline compared to the dollar which had almost reached the 100 LBP threshold. This fall worried the population.
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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.
February 7, 1987saturday
The confrontations intensified around the Palestinian camps of Chatila and Bourj Brajneh. The risk of escalation intensified.
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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.
February 12, 1987thursday
While the Lebanese Pound continued to fall, the chief of State Amine Gemayel, arrived in Bruxelles to request a social and economic help from the European countries.
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February 15, 1987sunday
A vast military confrontation between Amal and the PSP erupted in West Beirut. It was a prelude to the entrance of 12,000 Syrian soldiers in this region. However, they didn't deploy in the Southern suburbs.
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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).
June 1, 1987monday
The Prime Minister Rachid Karameh was assassinated, torn to shreds by the explosion on the helicopter that was supposed to take him from Tripoli to West-Beirut. However, his post as Chief of the Cabinet did not remain vacant: Selim Hoss was designated by presidential decree as the interim Chief of Government.
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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.
June 3, 1987wednesday
A Syrian delegation led by Abdel-Halim Khaddam, the Syrian Republic's Vice-President attend the national funerals of Karame in Tripoli.
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June 5, 1987friday
The President of the National Assembly, Hussein Husseini, announces his resignation, thus increasing the institutional gap.
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June 17, 1987wednesday
Walid Joumblatt, leader of the PSP, and Nabih Berri, leader of the Amal militia, become reconciled under the aegis of the Syrian Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, and publish an agreement for fighting in 7 points.
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June 18, 1987thursday
An American journalist, Charles Glass, accompanied by the son of the Minister of Defense Ali Adel Osseirane, are kidnapped in Ouzaï.
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June 19, 1987friday
The price of fuel goes up from 190 LBP to 290 LBP for 20 litres while the gas demijohn goes up from 110 LBP to 155 LBP. The index of livelihood cost has increased by 82,8 % since January.
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September 1, 1987tuesday
President Gemayel arrives in Quebec to request, in front of the Francophony Summit, the creapour demander, the creation of Special Support Funds in Lebanon.
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September 5, 1987saturday
September 20, 1987sunday
700 PSP combattants PSP and about 100 activists from the Communist Party get ready to go to Lybia in order to fight with the Lybians against the Army of Tchad.
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The numbers differ: about 800 PSP fighters (de Clerck and Malsagne, after the Washington Post of 21 September 1987) or about 1,000 Druze militiamen and 300 fighters of leftist organisations (Hanf). Hanf adds that the parties received a share of their pay and sees the episode as a sign of resignation after the Syrian return.
September 23, 1987wednesday
As the Minister of Education, Selim Hoss asks universities to organize admission competotion and exams since the Baccalaureat exams couldn't be presented.
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September 24, 1987thursday
Father Andre Masse is assassinated close to Saida. He was head of the USJ (Saint-Joseph University) section in South-Lebanon.
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Not long before he was killed, Masse remarked that the foreign press passed over much of Lebanon's cultural, economic and political life; Picard quotes him.
December 2, 1987wednesday
While credits are unblocked to buy fuel and service stations are reopened, Victor Cassir, Minister of Industry and Oil, authorizes private companies to import fuel subject to a previous authorization by the Ministry of Oil.
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December 8, 1987tuesday
The storm is raging in the country. Floods provoke important damages and kill 5 persons. On the other hand, electric power becomes rare.
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December 28, 1987monday
Charles Malek dies at the age of 82 ans following a long period of illness. The news of the death of the former Council's Vice-President and Minister of Foreign Affairs saddens the political, as well as the academic and intellectual sets. The American President Ronald Reagan addresses an emotional tribute to the memory of the academic, the philosopher and the politician.
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January 3, 1988sunday
Murderous Israeli raids on Palestinian and Progressive Socialist Party positions in the region of Saida make kill 21 persons and wound 11.
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January 4, 1988monday
A Progressive Socialist Party member hijacks a Lebanese Army helicopter. This affair triggers a maritime blockade imposed by the Army on the Chouf region.
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January 10, 1988sunday
In order to avoid the escalation, Joumblatt surrenders the 'Gazelle' to the Hammana barrack but the major insists on going back to Adma. Two days later, this crisis is forgotten and the maritime blockade is lifted up.
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