Deploying the army, Sarkis insisted on his return from an Arab meeting at Ta'if in February 1980, should come before political reform (Traboulsi). Amal and the Phalange newspaper al-Amal also called for the army to be sent south (Traboulsi; Hanf).

Hanf places it in early 1980. Palestine Liberation Army units under Syrian or pro-Syrian command took over the Syrian posts in and near Beirut, while the Syrian troops, bar one garrison, quit the city's dividing line and the coast road to the south and redeployed to the heights above the capital.

One of many clashes between Kataeb and National Liberal militiamen: de Clerck and Malsagne count 46, with 200 dead, from 1976 to 1980, the latest wave running from 12 May 1979 to 2 July 1980 and reaching Achrafieh early in 1980. Ménargues traces the tension of early 1980 partly to disputes over dividing the arms Israel supplied.

See the note on the entry of 25 January 1980.

Historians describe the Syrian pull-back from Beirut in 1980 as a redeployment to the Bekaa and to mountain positions overlooking the capital, with a garrison kept in West Beirut (Hanf). The Lebanese army could not replace the departing Arab Deterrent Force everywhere (Picard).

Ménargues writes that Bashir Gemayel usually took Maya to her grandmother's on Saturdays but, sick after the sea crossing from Jerusalem the day before, had her governess and his bodyguards take her in his car, which was blown up less than a kilometre from his home. He blames the Palestinians there; later he says an inquiry into Aman el-Mandoubine, a network run by a Fatah intelligence officer, led to the arrest of two Christians who planted the bomb. One annex dates the attack 21 February.

Officially no killer was named, but al-Lawzi's murder was widely blamed on his criticism of Syrian rule (Fisk; Picard). Fisk: he was seized near a Syrian army checkpoint heading for the airport.

Ménargues dates the resignation to March 1980, after repeated deadlock between Hoss and Sarkis over the army; Hoss stayed on as caretaker until Shafiq Wazzan's appointment in late October.

Hanf records the Lebanese Front's formula as 'political pluralism, military unity'. Traboulsi describes an eight-member executive committee under Bashir Gemayel running the Lebanese Forces: three Phalange seats, two each for the National Liberals and the Tanzim, one for the Guardians of the Cedars. Ménargues notes that after Ain el-Remmaneh Bashir had every unit swap its militia badges for one common insignia.

Ménargues counts 10 dead and 62 wounded from two car bombs in Achrafieh, Bashir Gemayel's power base.

The crisis began on 20 December when Elias Hannouche, a former Tiger commander backed by Syria, seized the old National Liberal office in Zahle. After an ambush inside the town killed five Syrian soldiers on 22 December, Syrian artillery opened fire on it (Ménargues; Hanf counts an officer and five soldiers). De Clerck and Malsagne date the bombardment to 21 December and call it the first round of the battle of Zahle. Most of the former Tigers then joined the Lebanese Forces, and Syrian troops stayed positioned around the town until the siege of spring 1981.

Dates differ. De Clerck and Malsagne's chronology has the Lebanese Forces controlling East Beirut from 31 October 1980. Ménargues puts the LF's 48-hour assault on Ain al-Remmaneh, held by Elias Hannouche's Chamounists, ten days after the 10 November car bombs, around 20 November 1980.

After the December 1980 clashes in Zahleh, Syrian troops gave up their checkpoints inside the town but kept it under blockade (Hanf). Ménargues, however, says ADF checkpoints were still on the town's main roads when Lebanese Forces fighters seized them in the first days of April 1981.