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So, what time period is this? A US president, following an extended period of tacit encouragement, has ultimately stepped in to halt an Israeli military offensive that has turned large areas of a city in the Middle East to rubble, causing thousands dead and generating international condemnation.

The campaign has been preceded by a succession of strikes on Israel. Now, under pressure from American leadership, the Israeli prime minister, a right-leaning figure with a talent for popular speech and an intense sense of historical Jewish national duty, has approved a halt in hostilities.

Past Echoes

The year is not the current year, but the early 1980s. The city is not Gaza City, but Beirut, Lebanon. The US leader is the Reagan administration, not the current administration.

We find many differences between what happened in the Lebanese nation more than four decades ago and recent developments in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 months. The Hamas raid of recent times, which resulted in 1,200 and saw 250 seized, differs significantly with the relatively paltry actions of the PLO in the year or so before the Israeli incursion of Lebanon.

Remarkable Resemblances

Certain parallels are striking. The US leader eventually picked up the phone the Israeli leader, informing him that what was happening in Beirut was "a disaster" and explaining the diplomatic ties between their nations could be gravely damaged if the conflict carried on.

At that time, comparable to present circumstances, the fighting developed in live on global media. Hundreds correspondents traveled to the capital to document for the initial instance an regional battle without censorship by either side.

Results and Outcomes

The situation after the call from Reagan and the truce in the city is revealing. The liberation movement, its divisions and leaders were spread across thousands of miles and a multiple nations.

The US administration then pulled out US-led peacekeepers – a breach of the agreement with Arafat. The Lebanese president, the nation's newly elected leader and Israeli-supported figure, was murdered by Syrian security services.

Area-wide Shifts

The same was true across the wider Middle East. By the conclusion of that decade, the increasingly non-religious and modern approaches that had appeared to provide the hope of a different tomorrow in the Middle Eastern nations a decade or so earlier were weakened.

The results of this emerged rapidly, very quickly

Across the region, the Israeli state and the America now faced enemies who were significantly more stubborn, deadly and efficient than the leftists and patriotic organizations of the past.

Global Approach

Among Western nations, the outcomes of this were unexpected. During the seventies, global observers and policymakers had tried to analyze what led to militant radicalism.

Afterward, in the beginning of that decade, this ended. Government officials in the America, the UK and additional countries were lost interest in "root causes" of violence.

Contemporary Echoes

In recent days, accounts show that present administration told government representatives that the state could not oppose international consensus and acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for a independent nation.

This also was an repetition of historical precedent. In the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of that nation, past government told the nation that the capability of its defense establishment alone could not "achieve enduring settlement" and acknowledged "justified demands of the Arab residents."

Yet a US-led regional peace plan supposed to answer those grievances stalled completely. From exile, political figures observed impotently.

Global attention in the area waned. Israel resisted any concessions. Subsequently, there was the initial uprising, and the establishment of new resistance movements.

• The patterns of previous events offer sobering insights for contemporary diplomatic initiatives
• Permanent settlements require confronting fundamental problems rather than short-term truces
• Area politics continue to develop in complex and often unpredictable ways