The Mossad agent who slept with a pistol. Delusional meals with Ariel Sharon in Beirut. The orchestra that played ‘Hava Nagila’ for spies. Ranking figures who dug in ruins to find a Rolex. Forty years after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel and the refugee camp massacres, former officials reveal the house of cards Israel built in Lebanon, and how it collapsed

Bashir Gemayel woke up relatively late on September 14, 1982. He’d been up until the small hours of the night drafting and practicing his speech for his presidential swearing-in, which was set to take place eight days later. Three weeks earlier, he had achieved – with close Israeli assistance – a goal that had only recently been considered fanciful, when he was elected, at the age of 34, president of multinational, fragmented Lebanon.

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