[24] Musa al-Sadr's unsolved disappearance in 1978 during a trip to Libya, following the Litani operation, led to a struggle for influence among the Shiites, and left Amal's leadership divided along moderate and extremist lines.

[29] Two months later, Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, met with a number of prominent Lebanese Shiite figures in Tehran, including Fadlallah and Subhi al-Tufayli, who would later become Hezbollah's first secretary-general, among several others.

[34] Meanwhile, the IRGC delegation, stationed in the Beqaa Valley,[n 10] helped form the nucleus of Hezbollah's leadership after a recruitment campaign that managed to gather several Lebanese clerics in its ranks.

[29] Hezbollah originally devoted itself to overthrowing the Lebanese government and establishing a Faqihi Islamic Republic in the image of Iran and resisting the presence of Israeli troops and the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) in the country, as illustrated later by the "Open Letter", a constitutional document which it released in February 1985.

[44] The hijacking of TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome in 1985 by Hezbollah, which was forced to land in the Amal-controlled Beirut International Airport, initially embarrassed Berri and Syria,[45] and further added to the tension between the Syrian and Iranian camps.

[49][n 12] Hezbollah considered this sort of inter-Muslim fighting a distraction from the resistance to Israel,[50] and Iran was keen to lift Amal's siege on the Palestinian camps, publicly denouncing its actions as beneficial to the Israelis,[51] against whom it sought to create a Shiite-Palestinian coalition.

[57] On February 17, 1988, while on his way back from a meeting with a local Amal official, American colonel William R. Higgins,[n 13] who was heading a United Nations observers' mission, was captured by Hezbollah men on a coastal road in South Lebanon.

[64] Amal declared victory over "extremism and political kidnapping" by mid-April, announcing an end to Hezbollah's military presence in the south,[60] and expelled a number of its rival's clerics to the Beqaa.

[65] A high-level Iranian delegation headed by Ahmad Jannati, which arrived in Lebanon earlier that month following the outbreak of violence, announced during a press conference on April 22 the creation of a five-member commission to solve the crisis that consisted of himself and representatives from Amal and Hezbollah.

[68] Days after Jannati's conference, fighting re-erupted, but this time in the Beqaa Valley on April 26, and a Hezbollah fortification in the southern village of Maydoum was raided by Israeli commandos on May 2.

They formulated a ceasefire, and a joint security force involving Syrian troops, the IRGC and fighters from both Amal and Hezbollah started patrolling the suburbs on May 12 as part of the agreement's terms.

[96] Clashes re-erupted on December 31, 1988, at 3:30 p.m., until the intervention of a joint security committee two hours later, in the southern Chyah district of Beirut, as well as in the areas of Rawdat al-Shahidain, Abdel Karim al-Khalil and parts of Ghobeiry.

[101] On January 8, 1989, Hezbollah concentrated its presence in Jabal Safi, a hilly region located between the territories controlled by Amal and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army (SLA), forming a pocket there.

[102] Amal counterattacked that night in Kfar Fila, and clashes ended the following morning on January 9, when it managed to retake the town following violent confrontations there between 7 and 10 a.m., during which hand grenades and melee weapons were used.

A Lebanese security delegation visiting those villages noted in its report that it had found dozens of bodies along the streets there, and that the town of Kfar Fila was being shelled intermittently by Hezbollah artillery installations in Luwayza, Ain Bouswar and Jabal Safi.

A group of women rallied in protest against the violence in Kfar Heta, and a general strike took place throughout South Lebanon, which was ordered by Amal's regional command in solidarity with the victims.

[104] Armed militiamen were present on the entrances of villages and towns throughout the Nabatieh region, and masked men were detaining Hezbollah affiliates at roadblocks in the conflict zone and in Tyre.

[102] Backed by rockets and artillery strikes from launchers stationed in Zefta, Arabsalim, Marwania and Houmine al-Fawqa, about 600 Amal fighters participated in the offensive, and made no significant territorial gains.

His terms, which included a return to the status quo that existed prior the Iqlim war, were welcomed by Berri and by Mohammad Mehdi Shamseddine, president of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council (SISC).

Another general strike, organized by Amal, took place that day and involved different parts of Lebanon, including the south, the Dahieh suburb of Beirut and the Beqaa, condemning the events of "Black Saturday" and other "massacres" which it accused Hezbollah of having committed earlier that month.

[116] On January 19, Amal struck Hezbollah positions in Jabal Safi from Sarba, and clashes took place on the Kfar Fila-Jbaa and Jarjouh-Ain Bouswar front lines, as well as in Beirut's Dahieh.

[128] Sniper shots in Ghobeiry and Haret Hreik during the early dawn hours of July 9 led to a re-escalation of fighting, with both sides clashing at the entrances of Dahieh with machine guns and artillery, almost isolating the suburbs from the rest of West Beirut.

Amal said that it had conducted an offensive at around 3:30 p.m. to reclaim its Ouzai possessions that were lost two days earlier, accusing its rival of having started the fighting when Hezbollah elements infiltrated its territory in the area.

A Syrian Army contingent consisting of 300 soldiers deployed along the path from Ouzai to the main coastal road at around 8:45 p.m., and other forces stationed themselves in different conflict zones to separate the warring sides.

By 2:30 p.m., Sohmor fell to Hezbollah following street battles there, where Amal's leading security official in the Western Beqaa was injured by an RPG strike on the movement's command center in the town.

[132] Another ceasefire was officially announced at 8 a.m. the following morning while Syrian troops were still deploying, but it was followed by occasional street battles that took place in the Bourj Abi Haydar and Wadi Abu Jamil regions, as well as in the Iranian Cultural Moustasharia's surroundings further south.

[n 18] A senior Hezbollah official said that it was only a matter of time before war broke out between the two rivals, and confirmed that PFLP-GC fighters also mobilized in Ain Bouswar and Jbaa, a Hezbollah-controlled town where Iranian physicians had arrived a month earlier and were assigned to field hospitals there.

[138] The fighting began when Hezbollah, aiming to connect its encircled pocket in Jabal Safi to the Mediterranean coast westward and to the Nabatieh region southward, launched an offensive similar to its earlier January campaign, though this time the initial push came from Jbaa.

Hundreds of families had already left the Iqlim when the mobilizations began days earlier, while others set up checkpoints near the Amal-held villages of Ain Qana, Arabsalim and Mjaydal to limit the infiltration of Hezbollah affiliates to the region.

The fighting devolved into minor skirmishing by nightfall, and was widely condemned by Lebanese Shiite figures like Qabalan and other politicians, such as Osama Saad of the Popular Nasserist Organization, which hosted a "national Islamic summit" in its Sidon headquarters denouncing the violence.