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So, which time period do we find ourselves? An American leader, after months of implicit backing, has finally intervened to end an Israeli military offensive that has turned large areas of a Middle Eastern city to rubble, leaving many thousands deceased and generating worldwide anger.

This military action has come after a sequence of attacks on Israel. Currently, responding to pressure from the White House, the Israeli prime minister, a right-leaning figure with a talent for populist rhetoric and a strong feeling of historical Jewish national duty, has approved a ceasefire.

Past Echoes

The year is not the current year, but the early 1980s. The location is not present-day Gaza, but the Lebanese capital. The American president is the Reagan administration, not today's leadership.

Exist significant distinctions between the events in Lebanon more than four decades ago and what has happened in the Gaza Strip in the recent period. The militant assault of last year, which caused over a thousand and saw 250 taken hostage, bears little comparison with the somewhat modest activities of the Palestinian leadership in the year or so before military entry of the Lebanese nation.

Remarkable Resemblances

Several similarities are remarkable. The president ultimately picked up the phone the prime minister, stating to him that events in the city was "a holocaust" and indicating the relationship between their nations could be seriously harmed if the fighting persisted.

At that time, comparable to present circumstances, the conflict played out in real time on televisions worldwide. Hundreds journalists entered the city to report on for the initial instance an regional battle without information control by any party.

Aftermath and Consequences

The events following the conversation from the US president and the ceasefire in the city is educational. The Palestinian organization, its factions and officials were dispersed across vast distances and a various states.

Washington then withdrew international forces – an infringement of the agreement with Arafat. The elected leader, the nation's recently chosen head of state and Israel's preferred proxy, was murdered by Syrian intelligence.

Area-wide Shifts

Similar patterns emerged across the wider Middle East. By the end of the 1970s, the more secular and modern approaches that had appeared to provide the hope of a changed reality in the Arab and Islamic worlds previously were undermined.

The outcomes of this emerged rapidly, in short order

Throughout the area, the Israeli state and the America now encountered opponents who were considerably more intractable, dangerous and efficient than the secular movements and independence advocates of the past.

Western Response

In the west, the results of this were counterintuitive. Through the seventies, western analysts and government representatives had sought to understand what generated armed fundamentalism.

Then, in the early 1980s, this stopped. Government officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and additional countries were no longer interested in "root causes" of conflict.

Contemporary Echoes

Last week, reports indicate that current leadership told government representatives that the state could not confront global opinion and acknowledged national hopes for a state.

This also was an echo of 1982. In the consequence of the armed entry of the neighboring country, earlier administration told the nation that the strength of its military alone could not "establish just and lasting peace" and recognized "justified demands of the Palestinian population."

But a internationally-backed regional peace plan meant to answer those concerns failed to progress. Abroad, political figures looked on impotently.

Global attention in the area diminished. Israel resisted any concessions. Later, there was the first intifada, and the founding of new resistance movements.

• The patterns of history offer thought-provoking perspectives for current diplomatic initiatives
• Lasting solutions require confronting fundamental problems rather than short-term truces
• Area politics continue to evolve in complicated and often unpredictable ways