February 15 – Syria

The Second round of Geneva talks between the United Nations special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and representatives of the Syrian government and opposition reaches an impasse. The opposition demands a transitional government that would not include current President Bashar al-Assad, while the Syrian government calls the opposition terrorists and insists on fighting them before discussing any issues. The only agreement both sides were able to come to was allowing the civilians to leave the besieged city of Homs. Since 2011, more than 100,000 people have lost their lives and more than 9 million have been displaced in Syria’s conflict.

April 30 – Iraq

Iraq holds its first parliamentary elections since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011. Despite a heavy security presence, several bomb attacks targeting polling stations kill a dozen of people. Nine thousand candidates are running for 328 seats in the lower house of the parliament. The results will be known in May.

May 19 – Iraq

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s alliance, State of Law, wins Iraq’s last month parliamentary elections, remaining Maliki in his position for the next term. This was the first election since the U.S. troops left the country in 2011. Maliki faces many challenges, including rising sectarian violence that killed several thousand of people just this year. He also faces opposition to his premiership being accused of inability to stabilize and unite the country. Rather than making new compromises with Iraqi Sunnis, Maliki is accused of trying to monopolize power among his Shia allies.

June 2 – Palestinian Territories

After seven years of often violent division between the Fatah-run West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, a new Palestinian unity government is sworn in. The new cabinet is headed by the Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah from the Fatah-led Palestinian government in the West Bank and none of its members are affiliated with Hamas. The new government says it will uphold all previous agreements with Israel. The United States and the European Union vow to work with the new government as long as it abides by its promises. Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas-led government in Gaza stepped down.

June 3 – Syria

The embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wins a third term as president getting more than 88 percent of the vote in elections conducted only in the areas controlled by the government. The north and the east of the country that is held by the rebels criticize the idea of elections in the midst of the civil war and call it as a sham.

June 10 – Israel

The Israeli parliament elects Reuven Rivlin from the Likud party as the country’s next president. Rivlin supports Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and opposes a separate Palestinian state. The post of president in Israel, however, is largely ceremonial and the president does not take part in negotiations in the peace talks with the Palestinians.

June 29 – Iraq

An Islamic militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), announces that it has established an Islamic state, a Caliphate, on the territories under its control in Iraq and Syria. It also declares its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a caliph. The ISIS controls northwestern territories of Iraq and Syria, including major cities of Falluja, Mosul, and Tikrit, and threatens to advance on the capital, Baghdad. The ISIS was formed in April 2013 as an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. At first, the ISIS’s funding came from wealthy sponsors in such Middle Eastern countries as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Today, however, its assets come from oil fields and stolen money from banks in controlled territories, and amount to $2 billion. The group is made up of Sunni Muslims and foreign fighters who accuse the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shia, of monopolizing power and discriminating against the Sunnis.

July 8 – Israel/Palestinian Territories

Israel launches an open-ended aerial operation on the Gaza Strip to end rocket attacks against Israel. These hostilities are preceded by murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank blamed on Hamas, and a Palestinian teenager killed in retaliation in Jerusalem. Hamas increased rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel, especially after a few of its armed wing members were killed in Israeli attacks.  (July 14 and 26): Ceasefires are mediated and proposed, backed by Palestinian  President Mahmoud Abbas, but are rejected by Hamas leaders, who say that any ceasefire has to be precipitated by an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. (July 17):  Israel expands the operation to a ground invasion with the stated aim of destroying Gaza’s tunnel system. (July 30): Reports say at least 1,200 Palestinian have been killed (most of them civilians) and 55 Israelis (53 are soldiers) in this conflict so far.

July 18 – Iraq

Thousands of Iraqi Christians are fleeing the town of Mosul after the militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), who control the city, threatened to kill them unless they make protection payments. Many Christian families make their way to the neighboring autonomous Kurdish region.

July 29 – Libya

Islamic militants in Libya seize a special forces base in the country’s second largest city of Benghazi. The United States has evacuated its staff from the capital Tripoli as security situation deteriorated. Since the overthrow of Libya’s dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has been plagued by infighting of thousands of various militant groups and weak and ineffective government.

August 8 – Iraq/Syria

The United States launches air strikes in Iraq against militants from the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) who control vast areas in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. planes and drones attack IS targets near Irbil, capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, and help Iraqi forces to break the siege of Mount Sinjar, where people from religious minorities fled the brutality of IS. (August 14): Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is forced to step down and is replaced by Haider Al-Abadi who is expected to form a government of national unity. He was Minister of Communication from 2003 to 2004, in the first government after Saddam Hussein. (August 19): In response to American airstrikes in Iraq, the IS beheads U.S. journalist James Foley who was held captive since November 2012.

August 28 – Turkey

After serving three terms as prime minister, Recap Tayyip Erdogan becomes Turkey’s president after winning the first publicly-held presidential election. The country’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is elected as head of the governing AK Party and is set to become the country’s next prime minister.

September 9 – Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi forms a new government, inclusive of the country’s main minority groups. It is hoped that the move will pull Iraq’s forces together and unite it against the threat from the Islamic State (IS) militants. Prime Minister Abadi, who is Shia, nominated three deputy ministers: Hoshyar Zebari, the Kurdish outgoing foreign minister, Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni, and Baha Arraji, a Shia and former Member of Parliament.

September 22 – Yemen

The Yemeni government signs an UN-brokered truce and power-sharing agreement with the Houthi rebels who have taken over parts of the country’s capital, Sanaa. The Houthis belong to the Zaidi Shia minority who demand greater autonomy for their northern province of Saada. According to the deal, the two sides will form a new unity government with the Houthis choosing a prime minister.

September 22 – Syria/Turkey

The United States-led coalition begins air strike targets inside Syria that belong to the Islamic State (IS) militants and the Khorasan group, another militant group formed from al-Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda operating in Syria and Lebanon. The coalition includes Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE). (September 27): The coalition air strikes IS targets near the besieged northern Syrian town of Kobane on the border with Turkey, helping Kurdish fighters push back the militants. Tens of thousands of Kobane civilians flee the town for Turkey. Kobane is a strategic place, which would give the militants control over a long stretch of Syrian territory alongside the Turkish border. Under pressure from other countries and its own Kurdish population, Turkey opens its border for Syrian Kurds fleeing the violence around Kobane. Since 2011, when the fighting against the Syrian government began, Turkey has accepted about 850,000 refugees from Syria.

October 12 – Palestinian Territories

International donors from dozens of countries who have gathered in Egypt for the Cairo Conference on Palestine, cohosted by Norway, pledge $5.4 billion for reconstructing the Gaza Strip. This Palestinian Territory suffered great losses during the 50 day-conflict between Israel and Hamas that ended in a truce on August 26. The money is needed for humanitarian relief, early recovery, and reconstruction. Among the donors, the United States pledges $212 million, the United Arab Emirates – $200 million, Turkey – also pledges $200 million, and the European Union – about $568 million.

October 20 – Iraq/Syria/Turkey

Turkey announces that it will allow Iraqi Kurdish forces to cross its border on the way to the Syrian town of Kobane in order to help the Syrian Kurds fight Islamic State (IS) militants. Kobane has been under siege for six weeks. The United States-led coalition drops weapons, ammunition and medical supplies over Kobane and steps up air strikes on militants.

October 29 – Palestinian Territories

Egypt demolishes homes in Sinai to create a buffer zone along its 8-mile long border with the Gaza Strip, which will include water-filled trenches. The goal is to halt smuggling of weapons and fighters through tunnels under the Gaza and Sinai border. These tunnels have had also economic significance since the blockade imposed on the Gaza by Egypt and Israel in 2007. People living within the zone are being resettled.

November 12 – Iran

Russia will build several nuclear reactors in Iran, which might ease Iran’s demands to enrich its own uranium it claims it needs for its civilian nuclear program. The stipulation is that Russia will supply nuclear fuel for the reactors and retrieve the spent fuel back to Russia for re-processing. This will ensure that Iran does not use the fuel to build nuclear weapons.

December 9 – Israel

Israeli lawmakers vote to dissolve the country’s parliament after a few days earlier Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked two members of his coalition government over policy disagreements and called for the dissolution of the parliament. The two dismissed ministers were Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, are members of Netanyahu’s rival parties. Early elections are expected to take place in March 2015.

December 31 – Palestinian Territories

The United Nations Security Council rejects a draft resolution that called for ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories by the end of 2017, including the full withdrawal of Israeli troops and new negotiations based on the territorial lines from before the 1967 war. If approved, the motion would have paved the way to a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The motion needed 9 votes for passing; it received 8 (Russia, China, France, Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan and Luxembourg). The United States and Australia voted against it, with the UK, Lithuania, Nigeria, Korea and Rwanda abstaining. However, the resolution faced a veto by the U.S., which would have prevented its possible adoption.