Bashir Gemayel, back from Saudi Arabia on 2 July, said the PLO did not mean to leave. Two hours earlier, at the Alexandre Hotel, Sharon had told reporters, Robert Fisk among them, that Israel's only aim was to destroy the PLO and it wanted not 'one square inch' of Lebanon.

A US-backed Security Council resolution demanded that West Beirut's water and power be restored; Lebanon's minister of hydroelectric resources called the Israeli step 'inhuman'. Fisk dates the cut to early on 5 July, when Israel switched off electricity and water and barred food, having reduced power since the third week of June. Ménargues describes a further cut on 26 July.

In Ménargues, Damascus unofficially signalled no objection to transit through Latakia on 7 July, then officially refused the fighters on 9 July, the day Israeli troops took the Beit Eddine army barracks.

David Dodge was the acting president of AUB. Two gunmen in a car seized him on the campus; he was held for a year, taken to Iran, and released with Syrian help (Fisk).

Bashir Gemayel announced his candidacy on 24 July on the Kataeb radio Voice of Lebanon, introduced by his brother Amine (Ménargues; Hanf gives 25 July). The Lebanese Front had already endorsed him on 26 May.

Among the targets on 27 July was an apartment building on Iskandar Street where, according to Robert Fisk, almost a hundred people were killed.

The attempt on Walid Jumblatt left him only slightly hurt. Hanf sees it as one more spur to Druze mobilisation, which put about 30,000 men under arms.