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).

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.

Hanf mentions the failed attempt on Chamoun's life early in 1987 and notes that he died in August of that year.

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.

Traboulsi dates the break between the two presidents to their meeting of 13-14 January 1986, when Gemayel rejected the Syrian-sponsored Tripartite Accord.

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.

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.

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).

Hanf writes that in June 1987 Walid Jumblatt was forced to surrender to Syria several men of the PSP intelligence branch, his security chief among them, who had joined in hit-and-run attacks on Syrian forces in West Beirut.

Under the 5 April accord, reached by Amal, the PLO and the pro-Syrian Palestinian National Salvation Front with the Syrian general Ghazi Kanaan present, the blockade was to be lifted, the wounded taken out and the PLO was to leave three villages near Sidon. Food and medicine then reached Chatila and Bourj al-Barajneh, the first since March. Picard dates the end of the siege to an Amal-Palestinian agreement of 11 September 1987; Hanf has Amal lifting the blockade only on 18 January 1988.

Hanf lists five increasingly political CGTL strikes in 1987 (April, July, August, September, November), mass protests against the war more than ordinary strikes.

Before resigning, Karami had seen the cabinet reconvene in April to deal with the economic crisis, after months in which the Muslim ministers' boycott of Gemayel had kept it from meeting. Hanf treats his call to open the presidency to every community as the start of the contest for the 1988 presidential election.

The vote annulled both the 1969 Cairo Agreement on the Palestinian armed presence and parliament's earlier approval of the agreement of 17 May 1983 with Israel. For Hanf it was the period's most symbolic decision, and its most desperate.

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.