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So, which year do we find ourselves? An American leader, subsequent to lengthy of quiet support, has ultimately stepped in to stop an military campaign from Israel that has transformed swaths of a urban center in the region to rubble, leaving many thousands killed and prompting international condemnation.

This military action has followed a sequence of attacks on the Israeli nation. Presently, responding to pressure from American leadership, the Israel's leader, a conservative politician with a talent for populist rhetoric and a deep conviction of Zionist historical purpose, has approved a truce.

Past Echoes

The era is not present day, but 1982. The location is not present-day Gaza, but the Lebanese capital. The US leader is President Reagan, not today's leadership.

We find numerous variations between the events in Lebanon more than four decades ago and current circumstances in the Gaza Strip in the recent period. The militant assault of last year, which resulted in 1,200 and saw 250 captured, bears little comparison with the comparatively limited actions of the PLO in the time before Israel's invasion of the Lebanese nation.

Uncanny Similarities

Some are uncanny. The president ultimately made the call the Israeli leader, informing him that the situation in the capital was "a holocaust" and saying the relations between their countries could be significantly impaired if the violence continued.

At that time, much as today, the war played out in live on millions of screens. Numerous reporters flew into the city to cover for the first time an Middle Eastern conflict without media restrictions by the combatants.

Results and Outcomes

What happened subsequent to the conversation from American leadership and the halt in fighting in Beirut is instructive. The liberation movement, its divisions and officials were spread across multiple countries and a dozen countries.

Washington then withdrew international forces – an infringement of the arrangement with PLO leadership. The elected leader, the nation's recently chosen leader and Israel's chosen ally, was assassinated by Syrian intelligence.

Middle Eastern Changes

Similar patterns emerged across the wider Middle East. By the end of the 1970s, the increasingly non-religious and modern approaches that had seemed to offer the promise of a different tomorrow in the regional countries years before were discredited.

The outcomes of this became very clear, very quickly

Throughout the area, Israel and the America now faced opponents who were considerably more unyielding, deadly and effective than the secular movements and patriotic organizations of earlier years.

Global Approach

Among Western nations, the consequences of this were perverse. Throughout the seventies, global observers and government representatives had attempted to comprehend what led to violent extremism.

Then, in the start of the eighties, this ceased. Government officials in the America, the Britain and other nations were no longer interested in "underlying reasons" of conflict.

Modern Parallels

Last week, sources suggest that present administration informed the nation's leadership that the country could not confront global opinion and acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for a independent nation.

This too was an parallel of 1982. In the wake of the military incursion of that nation, past government told the Israeli government that the power of its armed forces alone could not "achieve permanent resolution" and recognized "justified demands of the Arab residents."

Yet a US-led comprehensive agreement supposed to resolve those grievances stalled completely. Abroad, Palestinian leadership watched helplessly.

Global attention in the area decreased. The state rejected accommodations. Subsequently, there was the first intifada, and the founding of additional militant groups.

• The repetitions of the past provide serious perspectives for contemporary resolution attempts
• Enduring agreements require confronting underlying issues rather than brief halts
• Local circumstances continue to develop in complex and sometimes unexpected ways