The Middle East, also known as the Middle East, refers to the eastern and southern Mediterranean, a large area from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, parts of West Asia and North Africa, including Egypt in West Asia and Africa except Afghanistan, and about 23 countries (including Palestine) with a population of 65.438+0.5 million square kilometers and 490 million.

The region connects Asia, Europe and Africa, and connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Since ancient times, the Middle East has been a transportation hub between the East and the West, a land of "two oceans, three continents and five seas", and its strategic position is extremely important. In order to compete for precious fresh water resources and oil resources, as well as religious and cultural differences, the situation is turbulent all the year round.

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The historical evolution of the Middle East issue can be summarized as "one, two, three and four", that is, one ancestor, two nationalities, three exiles and four wars. One ancestor, two nationalities, Palestine was called Canaan in ancient times, and its residents were called Canaanites. They were originally Semites in Arabia.

Around 1 1 century BC, the Philistines along the Aegean Sea moved to Canaan. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus, a Greek historian, called this area "Palestine" for the first time, which means "land of Philistines" in Greek, and it has been used ever since.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Middle East