The Year in Review-2014-4

As it keeps on happening in the Middle East, another Israeli-Palestinian conflict flared up. The reason was that three Israeli teenagers were supposedly kidnapped and then killed by the Palestinians who initially denied it but acknowledged their role when the war started. And the war was mainly confined to the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip as the West Bank ruled by its opposition was not touched. Although the Palestinians won the social media war but the sad part was that they did not won the hearts of the Arab government as the Arabs fearful of its Islamic background sometimes condemned its leadership and sometimes just ignored the casualties? At the end of the year a historical U.S. decision to restore ties with the Cuban government after over 50 years of imposing embargo on it. Some of the people were happy and some were not on this sudden turn of events as is the case with every decision which affects people. After much dallying by the U.S. and its allies, finally was the time to have an air campaign against ISIS to stop their advances towards the Iraqi capital Baghdad and roll back their victories. The U.S. (as usual) started to assemble a coalition of the forced including Arab allies to make it sound like the Arab Muslims are also against ISIS. Although experts are saying that this battle against ISIS will have to involve ground troops but so far the U.S. has resisted committing significant number of troops, although a few thousand are still on the ground taking the role of advising the Iraqi troops how to deal with ISIS. Curiously the U.S. has not invited Iran to play a role here as they need not need any invitation to join this war as they are already on the ground.