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So, what year are we in? An American leader, after months of implicit backing, has finally intervened to end an Israeli military offensive that has turned swaths of a Middle Eastern city to rubble, resulting in numerous individuals deceased and generating international condemnation.

This military action has followed a succession of attacks on Israel. Now, responding to pressure from the US administration, the Israeli prime minister, a rightwinger with an aptitude for populist rhetoric and an intense sense of historical Jewish national duty, has consented to a ceasefire.

Past Echoes

The year is not the current year, but four decades ago. The city is not the Gaza Strip, but Beirut. The US leader is Ronald Reagan, not the current administration.

There are significant distinctions between what happened in Lebanon more than four years past and what has happened in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 months. The October attack of last year, which resulted in twelve hundred and saw 250 taken hostage, differs significantly with the somewhat modest efforts of the PLO in the time prior to Israel's invasion of the Lebanese nation.

Remarkable Resemblances

Several similarities are remarkable. The president ultimately contacted the counterpart, informing him that events in the city was "a holocaust" and explaining the relationship between their nations could be gravely damaged if the violence persisted.

In 1982, comparable to present circumstances, the conflict unfolded in live on televisions worldwide. Numerous reporters entered Beirut to cover for the initial instance an Middle Eastern conflict without media restrictions by either side.

Aftermath and Consequences

The situation following the call from American leadership and the halt in fighting in the city is educational. The liberation movement, its groups and representatives were scattered across multiple countries and a dozen countries.

The US administration then pulled out US-led peacekeepers – an infringement of the agreement with Arafat. The elected leader, the country's freshly appointed president and Israel's preferred proxy, was killed by Syrian intelligence.

Regional Transformation

Similar patterns emerged across the wider Middle East. By the late seventies, the increasingly non-religious and forward-thinking concepts that had appeared to provide the potential of a changed reality in the Arab and Islamic worlds previously were undermined.

The results of this were quickly apparent, almost immediately

Throughout the area, the Israeli state and the US now confronted enemies who were considerably more intractable, deadly and efficient than the progressive groups and nationalists of the past.

Western Response

In the west, the outcomes of this were perverse. Throughout the 1970s, western analysts and government representatives had tried to analyze what generated militant radicalism.

Then, in the start of the eighties, this stopped. National figures in the United States, the UK and elsewhere were lost interest in "root causes" of unrest.

Contemporary Echoes

Last week, accounts show that current leadership communicated to government representatives that the country could not confront global opinion and admitted national hopes for a state.

This too was an repetition of that earlier period. In the wake of the military incursion of that nation, previous leadership told the Israeli government that the power of its armed forces alone could not "bring just and lasting peace" and accepted "legitimate rights of the Arab residents."

Yet a US-led comprehensive agreement supposed to answer those concerns failed to progress. Abroad, Palestinian leadership watched powerlessly.

Worldwide concern in the Middle East waned. The nation resisted any concessions. Later, there was the initial uprising, and the founding of further armed organizations.

• The patterns of previous events offer thought-provoking insights for present-day peace efforts
• Lasting solutions require dealing with root causes rather than brief halts
• Area politics continue to change in complicated and sometimes unexpected ways