●The Kataeb set up the first "canton," reaching Batroun on the edge of Marada territory

After the ceasefire of November 1976 the Kataeb set up the first "canton" of any Lebanese faction, an area of some two thousand square kilometres taking in the Metn, most of Kesrouan, East Beirut, the Jounieh coast, Amchit, Byblos and Batroun, so that its borders reached the Marada's areas of influence in the Koura and Zgharta. A Kataeb push northwards followed: Joud al-Bayeh, a bank manager in Chekka and head of the municipal council of Kfardlakos, became deputy head of the Kataeb's Zgharta district and tried to open a party office in Zgharta itself. With Frangieh's refusal of the alliance with Israel and of the cantons project, he held to his alliance with Damascus and boycotted the Lebanese Front's meetings from 1977, until the killing of Bayeh and the Ehden massacre in June 1978.