ABSTRACT
With the ceasefire of December 14, the “fifth round” of civil war in 1975 came to an end. Hostilities dropped sharply, and many hoped that the war had finally ground to a halt as nothing more than a stalemate seemed conceivable. Indeed, the firefights in downtown Beirut did end for a period, but, otherwise, the next round came quickly on the heels of the last. Several factions, especially the Phalangists and the Chamounists, were determined to eradicate the most intrusive of the rebel holdings. On the day that the ceasefire (in Beirut) went into effect, a Phalangist militia unit in Antilyās attacked a communist element of the Rejection Front at the nearby Shi‛ite slum of Herāt al-Ghawārīna just a few miles northeast of Beirut. Both sides attacked Lebanese security forces in Tripoli; hostilities also continued in Zahleh. Other bothersome peninsulas of rebel territory extended out to the large refugee camps in East Beirut, and the Phalange, almost immediately, began to blockade the Tel al-Za‛tar and Jisr al-Basha camps. By January 14 1976, the Phalangists had taken the largely Christian Dubayah camp, and on the 19th, they were able to wipe out the last resistance in the Karantīna district near the port, killing many of the poor Muslims there and removing the others. The leftist rebels, for their part, beseiged al-Jiyye and al-Damur, and these were taken by January 20. As already mentioned, Chamoun’s fortress estate at S‛adiyyāt was overrun and destroyed just four days later. It was clear that both sides could play the game of removing the pawns from the board.
