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So, which time period is this? A US president, after months of implicit backing, has at last become involved to stop an military campaign from Israel that has reduced extensive sections of a urban center in the region to debris, causing thousands deceased and sparking worldwide anger.

The campaign has followed a series of assaults on the Israeli nation. Now, responding to pressure from the US administration, the prime minister of Israel, a conservative politician with a gift for appealing language and a deep conviction of historical Jewish national duty, has approved a ceasefire.

Historical Comparisons

The era is not the current year, but the early 1980s. The urban center is not Gaza City, but the Lebanese capital. The president is the Reagan administration, not today's leadership.

We find many differences between what happened in Lebanon more than four in the past and what has happened in the Gaza Strip in the past two years. The militant assault of recent times, which killed 1,200 and involved numerous taken hostage, bears little comparison with the comparatively limited efforts of the PLO in the year or so preceding military entry of the Lebanese nation.

Remarkable Resemblances

Certain parallels are striking. Reagan finally picked up the phone the counterpart, stating to him that the situation in the city was "a disaster" and saying the relationship between their countries could be significantly impaired if the violence continued.

At that time, comparable to present circumstances, the fighting played out in live on millions of screens. Numerous reporters flew into the city to report on for the first time an regional battle without censorship by either side.

Subsequent Developments

The events after the conversation from American leadership and the halt in fighting in Lebanon is educational. The PLO, its factions and leaders were dispersed across thousands of miles and a multiple nations.

American leadership then removed international forces – a violation of the agreement with PLO leadership. The Lebanese president, the country's freshly appointed president and Israeli-supported figure, was assassinated by Syrian intelligence.

Middle Eastern Changes

The same was true across the wider Middle East. By the conclusion of that decade, the more secular and forward-thinking concepts that had seemed to offer the hope of a changed reality in the Arab and Islamic worlds a decade or so earlier were discredited.

The results of this became very clear, in short order

Throughout the area, Israel and the US now encountered opponents who were much more unyielding, lethal and capable than the progressive groups and nationalists of earlier years.

International Reaction

In the west, the results of this were perverse. Through the that decade, global observers and officials had attempted to comprehend what generated militant radicalism.

Afterward, in the early 1980s, this ended. Political leaders in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere were no longer interested in "fundamental sources" of unrest.

Contemporary Echoes

Recently, accounts show that present administration informed government representatives that the country could not oppose international consensus and recognized territorial ambitions for a state.

Similarly was an echo of 1982. In the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of the neighboring country, earlier administration told Israel that the strength of its military alone could not "bring permanent resolution" and recognized "justified demands of the Palestinian people."

However a internationally-backed regional peace plan meant to resolve those grievances went nowhere. From exile, political figures watched powerlessly.

International interest in the area waned. Israel opposed compromises. Later, there was the first intifada, and the founding of additional militant groups.

• The patterns of the past provide serious lessons for current resolution attempts
• Enduring agreements require confronting root causes rather than short-term truces
• Regional dynamics continue to develop in complicated and sometimes unexpected ways