Despite having joined in January 1976 the Lebanese Front alliance that gathered the main rightist Christian parties and their militias, the Frangiehs' close ties to Syria, along with their bitter political squabbling with the Gemayel clan – leaders of the Kataeb Party or 'Phalange' – and their disagreements with the other Christian leaders over their tactical alliance with Israel, prompted Frangieh to break from the Lebanese Front in 1977.

Joud El Bayeh was killed on 7 June 1978 by armed men sent by Tony Franjieh when he tried to open a political office in Zgharta.

The initial plan was to capture Tony Frangieh and force him to surrender the members of the Marada militia that killed the Phalangists.

[15] Syrian troops stormed a village, Deir el Ahmar, nearly 15.5 miles southeast of Ehden to search for the perpetrators on the same day.

[18] The Marada Movement, headed by Suleiman Frangieh Jr. in 1982, accused the Lebanese Forces of carrying out the Ehden massacre.

[21][22] Hanna Shallita was arrested during a 1994 government crackdown on Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, who was accused of staging the Ehden massacre.

[30][31] On 13 June 2008 OTV made a documentary about the massacre in which Youssef Frangieh revealed that he was the one who shot Samir Geagea.

[33] The travel writer and historian William Dalrymple reaches the conclusion that the Ehden massacre was remarkable and revealed more clearly than anything the medieval feudal reality behind the civilized twentieth-century veneer of Lebanese politics.

The book provides alleged details of how Samir Geagea, the chief of the Lebanese Forces party, was chosen in 1978 by Mossad to execute the Ehden massacre.